Training to be a non-BJCP judge, I have a question about scoring homebrews in the BJCP system: say homebrew X gets scored M in round one, and homebrew Y gets scored N in round one, and M is higher than N. And then X and Y are compared in round two, and Y is deemed “better” than X. Is the score of Y adapted to make it higher than X?
Or do things work in a completely different way?
Sometimes it happens like you described, but often not. It’s a lot of work making all these adjustments. Some judges take it upon themselves to rectify apparent “errors”. However I don’t believe it is a requirement to do so.
But that implies that a winner of a competition does not necessarily have the highest score, right?
That’s right…welcome to the world of mini-BOS.
Yep, found the explanation here: http://www.bjcp.org/docs/MiniBOS.pdf
Not sure which system is better: the one where the winner’s score gets artificially bumped up or the one where the winner does not necessarily have the highest score…
It’s not an implication. It’s a fact. That’s the way competitions work. So many things play into how a beer scores that it would be unfair to just assign winners by score. You might have one judge pair that’s extremely generous and another that’s especially stingy. Plus in many cases, beers early in a flight won’t always score as high as those later in a flight. As a brewer, all I’m looking for is whether I made mini-BOS. If I accomplish that, it doesn’t matter as much if/how I place since I know how those things work. Sometimes, it’s luck of the draw, and the beer that was scored was the ‘good’ bottle and the one in mini-BOS was a ‘bad’ bottle. Sometimes, it’s just that when compared side-by-side, one beer is more to style than another.
Finally won my first Best Of Show a couple weeks back. 41.5, only 4 entries in category. (And 3 medals given out :o )
Another of my entries scored 46. A third entry only scored 34, but over the weekend I got an email from a guy with 25 years of judging and mead making experience, who was drinking the second bottle and raved about it.
Different palates, different scoring thought processes, different judge skill levels.
Congrats on the BOS!
Usually not. The second round is the second round and what happened in the first round is past. I’m not saying your scenario doesn’t happen, but I don’t recall ever seeing it. Now, within the the same round a beer’s score may change relative to toher beers. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen it happen in different rounds.
I’ll say the magic word again that pisses some people off:
Crapshoot.
If you don’t realize that going in, then you shouldn’t be entering. And it’s usually not that bad.
I figure about 50/50 or worse.
Thank you! I’m just bummed that “Whatever Denny, I taste the decoction” didn’t place. Next time! ;D