Exactly. It’s not like you don’t still need to know the material for the new exam. It’s still an exam, not a formality.
The term ‘paying’ shouldn’t be the operative term here. There is no way that a competition could pay what it takes in terms of time and travel expenses. Defraying the very real costs for judges to participate is hardly what I would call paying. But, hopefully the reimbursement of those expenses will help a judge decide that they are valued at the contest. Its the out of towners that need the incentive, not folks like me that drove 15 miles. It really cost them something and I appreciate that they were willing to help out.
Drew, I am totally confused as to why you would have a problem with being paid. The competition is paying, not the person who’s beer is in front of you. (OK, they really are with their entry fee, but they don’t know you from Pete!) I too would have a problem with payment if someone was tapping me on the shoulder and slipping me a fiver for placing their beer. Fortunately the way we run competitions, there is no way a judge or contestant could know whose beer we’re judging at any time. Only after the smoke clears and the winners are announced! The Brewer’s Cup competition paid me $100 as an out of town judge 2 years ago for traveling over 100 miles to attend all sessions. I don’t feel violated nor do I feel I was compromised.
I don’t think that’s what he was saying. It’s not ‘payola’. However, instituting a program whereby judges who travel fartehr to be there to judge get ‘paid’ can be s slippery slope. What happens if so many judges come from a distance that competition entry fees don’t cover what you want to pay the judges. Who pays them then?
Good for you that you got paid that $100, but I don’t think it should be something the Homebrewer’s Association should pursue. If they do, they’ll have to have a grocery list of caveats & exemptions, etc.
As I read this thread it appears to me the real issue is that for some regions 750 entries is simply too many to handle. With fewer entries, the accute need for more qualified judges goes down. If the cap is lowered then there will need to be additional regions added to take up the slack, but this is costly. One comment about the cost analysis of the NHC was flawed in that most regions actually cost the the AHA more like $2,000 - $2,400. there was also no mention in the analysis of the costs for the second round of judging as well as the costs to mail out prizes and a significant number of certificates. Believe me, at $9.00 an entry, the AHA is not making any money. the entry fee was raised 2 years ago just to hit the break even point.
As chairman of the AHA’s competition subcommittee I promise you we will discuss all the points raised by the membership. Please understand this is not a money making proposition for the AHA, it should be viewed as a service the AHA and the enormous number of volunteers who work the NHC provide the membership. We are listening, but there are some very real problems that arise in this competition [due to it’s unprecidented size] that are not seen in other competitions. We’re not going to please everyone, but we are trying. This is uncharted water remember, who ever heard of a homebrew competition with something like 7,000 entries??
Keep the ideas coming,
Harold Gulbransen
AHA Gov Comm Competition subcommittee
Perhaps a possible solution would be to limit the number of entries that can be received per region. Basically, you’d have to register online somewhere before sending your entries in - to make sure you get in before the cutoff.
Then, those who don’t make it in time could try submitting their entries to a different judging region - one that, perhaps, has more judges to handle the higher volume of beers to be judged.
I’m just thinkin’ out loud…
You realize that is exactly what was done this year, right? Each region was capped at 750 entries.
There may be the possibility of having different limits in different regions depending on the local judge pool, but that is another layer of complexity and potential problems.
As I’ve said before, expect the PNW to fill up really quick next year if the rules are kept the same way.
Actually, my objection has always centered around the haves of the competition world getting a leg up on the smaller poorer comps. Aka - building up the whole idea “why should I judge some place that can’t offer me anything”
I have no doubt that this is true in some cases. In DFW’s case they can clearly judge 1800 Bluebonnet Brew-off beers so I assume they were just burnt out after that.
What about raising the entry fee for all entries over a certain limit? That might help offset high numbers of entries.
Why, so people can get their results faster? We judged the first weekend we could this year specifically because of other events we had going on, that might not be the case next year. So even if we finish in one weekend, it could very well be the last weekend possible for judging.
Harold,
I would be happy to see an itemized list of revenue and expenses related to the competition. I’ve run a 400+ entry competition that shipped prizes etc and we presented this info to our club members and I don’t see why the AHA can’t do the same. If $9 an entry results in zero bottom line and people calling to double entry fees so we can compensate judges perhaps we can find some efficiencies to be had if the membership can scrutinize how the money is being spent. Off the top of my head, if the certificates are so expensive to produce and ship that they warrant being on the short list of things that explain how several tens of thousands of dollars are spent after the first round, then may we could discontinue those as an alternative to raising entry fees. Additionally if we look at why some regions cost 50% more than others maybe that would give us some ideas on how to keep down costs.
In lieu of any transparency surrounding the finances of the competition can I ask a direct question? Does part of the competition revenue pay for AHA staff salaries? That would explain how you get from a really big number to zero a lot better than “shipping prizes and certificates”.
More generally to the thread. I strongly oppose cash payments but if any competition including the NHC can afford to directly provide something that travel requires and the judge would otherwise pay for then that is great. Hotel rooms are the obvious candidate. Personally $50 would never factor in to my decision to judge or not, even if you were asking me to drive across town. I think if you can spend a little money to make the experience fun or unique for the judges that may go further than direct reimbursements. Another option for the NHC in particular would be Conference discounts or free entries to the next years competition tied to judging/stewarding/organizing.
And I will reiterate my call for a 2 bottle entry. This clearly would increase the quality of the competition and would probably have the effect of suppressing entries too.
Thanks for chiming in, Harold.
What costs that much in a regional competition? Not the forms or the pencils or the cups. Probably not the lunches. Mailing can’t be too much. Not the judges or the organizers because they volunteer their time. Is it the venue? Or are you including the cost of a portion of the AHA staff?
If our local (state wide) competition cost that much we’d never survive.
Just curious, not doubting you.
I’d also like to see the breakdown of competition costs. I can’t imagine getting even close to $2000 dollars for a competition where there are entry fees collected.
I’ll leave the rest for Harold, but the reason the competition moved to a single bottle first round is due to space limitations. There was a fair amount of feedback from Site directors that they were having trouble pulling together enough cold storage for a multi-bottle entry round. The single bottle system allowed for more entries and less storage hassle.
Sometimes you have to put quality first. Not that judging fresh beers against beers open for 3 hours isn’t bad enough but the situation in NY this year where beers were open overnight and then judged in mini-bos is horrible and would have been avoided with a second bottle.
Honestly once you have the bottles sorted, do they really take up that much space (I’ve seen 900, I can extrapolate to 1500)? Maybe we should look harder for sites instead of sacrificing quality.
I guess I’ll put it this way. Does anyone want to defend the NY situation as anything other than a horrible judging situation? Does anyone have a better idea to prevent it from happening again?
+1, I think we had less than 5 categories that didn’t need a mini-BOS
Again, I suggest 3 rounds. Though it would require more overall coordination, you can spread out the first round judging to more sites, which would lighten number of entries advancing to the 2nd round regionals. Increasing fees, capping number of entries or asking for more bottles simply act as artificial barriers, instead of allowing the competition to grow organically.
I need to go read the details, but this is EXACTLY what I suggested a year or two ago! Huzzah!!!
Not to imply I deserve any credit, I am just stoked beause I think this is exactly what the Program needs to do.
Great comments everyone, I’ll try to answer some of the questions raised here:
in terms of 2 bottles, johnf raises some excellent points about 2 bottles and the quality of the competition. We are sensitive to this issue and it has been raised every year that I have been on the Gov Committee. The problem we have is, many regions can’t handle 1500 bottles arriving and storing them. many regions do not receive entries and judge in the same location, so the bottles need to be transported to the judging site. I am concerned about johnf’s comment that beers were stored overnight before mini-BOS judging the next day. this is clearly not optimal. We will definitely consider this issue again after the second round is completed.
johnf also asked about the cost of shipping certificates and prizes - again we can look at the specific costs of this and cutting back here in lieu of raising entry fees seems quite reasonable.
Jeffy asks about the costs of running a first round judging site. I have personally been a first round organizer 3 times over the last 10 years and our region has run right around $2,000 - $2,400 in that time. We have costs for beer storage, judging site rental, 3 meals [we judge on a Friday evening, Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon] - so we do one dinner, a light breakfast and a lunch. This is for approx 80 people each day [60 - 65 judges and 15 or so stewards]. Postage to mail out score sheets can be over $200. Cups - for 750 entries and mini-BOS panels for nearly every category one needs almost 3,000 cups. etc. etc, You get the idea, all these expenses total out to a pretty big number pretty quickly.
For second round judging a breakfast and lunch are provided to the judges and this is typically done in the conference hotel, which is much more costly than the way the first round sites can feed their judges.
Markaberrant raises an excellent point of having more smaller first round sites proceeding to regionals, then on to a final round. I’ve thought about this myself for some time now. We’ll discuss this in the subcommittee but again the problem is locating enough first round sites, the competition would need to start 2 months earlier [as this makes the competition a 3 tiered comp] and the added costs of multiple sites may not pencil out, but this is an excellent suggestion for revamping the entire competition, thanks.
I’m beginning to get too long winded here, suffice it to say a big part of the problem is the enormous size of this competition which cannot be run solely by volunteers, it requires AHA staff time to locate suitable judging centers and to field all the questions from entrants, support the database, etc. Due to the size of this competition it doesn’t scale up linearly from a local club competition that has 400 entries, it’s much more complicated, time consuming and costly to run.
Again, keep the suggestions coming, we are listening.
Harold Gulbransen