I just received my score sheets in the mail today. My entry scored a 42.5 but I did not place. I was very satisfied with the judges comments.
Which region are you in?
Good Job! That’s a fantastic score!
bo_gator Midwest Region.
Great score, must be one hell of a beer. But for the record, if your beer advanced to a mini BOS (which is likely), then the score has no relevance on it placing or not.
I had three beers that scored the highest in their respective categories last year. None of them moved on. Including a 44.
If I’m not mistaken, Mike McDole had beers score 45.5 and 40.0 this year and they didn’t move on.
tankdeer is correct.
Congrats on brewing a great beer!
It never really made sense to me before as to how this whole thing worked. But this year I actually participated in judging. And now having done that, it all makes perfect sense. To the OP, so help clear things up a little:
Basically in a category with a large number of entries, it would be too much for one set of judges to judge them all. So they break it into sub-panels. Each consisting of usually 2-3 judges, and each managing a smaller, much more manageable flight. The two sub panels judge their respective flights completely seperate of each other. And then after those are done, the best 3 beers from each sub panel go on to the mini BOS. (yours undoubtedly went this far with a score like that). For the mini BOS, they usually pick the more senior judges from each sub panel (in my case we had 2 sub panels with 2 judges each, and 3 of the 4 did the mini BOS - I didn’t get to participate since it was my first time), and they taste all the mini BOS beers and decide which is “best”. At this point, there are no scoresheets, names, anything. Just an entry number assigned to each beer. It’s possible at this time that the the beers from the other panel were better than yours, or that judging them side by side made some stand out more than yours, etc. There are several different variables at this point - remember that in a flight the beers are not judged side by side but instead back to back, and this can influence the judges perception of the beer. Things like flight order, pallet fatigue, etc.
Hope that helps to clear it up a little. I know it did for me.
/rambling
Thanks for taking the time to post that tankdeer.
Do they recap the bottles going to the mini BOS round and if so, do you think doing this negatively impacts those entries?
(I’m under the assumption that there can be a significant lag time between initial tasting and the mini BOS round for some, if not all, entries.)
Yes, they get recapped. In our case we used those reusable wine bottle stopper things. Basically what happened was that any beer that scored above a 30 (minimum score required to place) got resealed and the stewards took it back into the ‘cold room’. Then after the flight was judged they brought back the best 3 from each flight for the mini BOS.
It is possible that this could change the the perception during the mini BOS, especially if the beer was bottle conditioned (stirring up sediment moving it around). But it’s hard to say how much that would affect it considering all the other factors also in play. A second bottle would negate that factor, but bring a whole new set to the mix - bottle variances on carbonation, sanitation, caps sealing, etc. Not to mention that we’d all have to part with another bottle of precious homebrew and one of the nice things about the NHC is that the first round only requires 1 bottle. And another good thing is that you know, 100% sure, that the beer you judged in the original flight, is the same beer that you judged in the mini BOS.
Just for info purposes, what is the standard serving temperature when judging?
Dave
Some folks seem to be upset at the recapping and that setting these beers aside significantly affects the quality of their beers. I personally don’t see it, but I also have no practical experience with the judging. Thanks for your response and observations.
There really isn’t one. Each comp decides for itself and does the best they can.
See that’s just stupid. Would these people prefer that their bottles sit open for 1-2 hours while other’s are being judged? I mean, unless they want the mini BOS to be all flat beers. ??? Give me a break.
From a competition standpoint they really try and do everything in their power to treat the beers as good as possible. The beers are kept cold the entire time, not thrown around, and the recapping is to try and save the carbonation and aroma. As for the temp, like Denny says I don’t think there is a “standard”, and although our beers were just kept in coolers, they were at a decent temp. Probably about 40° when they were served - although the sample size is small enough that it warms up fairly quickly during judging - and the judges do pay attention to that.
My take on it is that they prefer having a second bottle judged.
However it is up to the highest ranking judge at each table to try and get the beers to the best temperature for the respective styles, even if this means letting them sit at room temp to warm up
So, then, would they like to send 3 bottles instead 2? You need to have a “just in case” bottle, so judging a different bottle for mini BOS means they’d have to send one more and each comp. location would have to handle and store 1/3 more bottles. I think that the people who complain about this are also missing the fact that all the mini BOS beers are treated the same way, so if this was to negatively affect anything, it would affect them all the same.
Absolutely…letting them warm up is easy. But there have been comps (names withheld to protect the guilty!) where the beers were served almost warm. Not too much the judges can do about that.
You’d have to ask them. 
The conversations are around on the various forums. For example, “…I rationalize [the entries] were victims of the AHA recapping on oxygen beer abuse and disrespect methodology.”
Agree with Denny. This is a massive competition. Sending more bottles just for a mini BOS is silly. The organizers are already dealing with hundreds and hundreds of bottles. Think about it, we had 2 (I think) regions this year hit the cap of 750 entries. That means they were already dealing with 750 bottles, can you imagine the headaches for those guys if they had to deal with 1500?
Whoever said that is an idiot, and has no idea how this works. They are obviously just trying to make excuses for why they didn’t win - and blame it on somebody else.