Will do
You’re probably a bit less than 2 hours from me in Tri-Cities. We’ve been doing a yearly BJCP study group, but I don’t think it is completely necessary to learn and get experience judging.
Locally we judge county fair (about 30ish entries each year) but the bulk of my judging experience comes from driving to Portland and Seattle.
Teckam or Pratt?
Awesome guys. Thanks James. I also have a crazy work schedule to wrestle with. I will become a judge but it make take some MacGyvering
I went with Teckam and still can’t praise him enough for what he did for me. Great guy.
beerjudgeschool.com I believe
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He really is a good guy and great judge. I regret not taking advantage of one of his study groups. School and work got in the way.
I’ll look into that Amanda, by the way congrats on making Zymurgy!
Thomas Barnes in New York is a National judge and grader. He put together these materials - the first two especially concentrate on how to write a scoresheet. I wish I had found it before taking the exam as he nailed a couple of my common problems. I also passed by studying on my own.
Of course, getting into an exam when you live in a rural area is also tough.
We’re talking about rules changes related to getting beers entered into the NHCompetition, not getting tickets to attend the NHConference. But yeah it looks like the conference is going to a lottery system too.
Two different problems. The NHCompetition not being able to judge all the beers that people would like to enter is (IMO) a matter of not having the (willing) judge pool capacity. It seems to me at least that the changes they made will address the judge pool / site side of the equation and # of entries.
The NHConference running out of tickets is a case of demand outpacing supply. The places lined up to host the conference two years in advance now have to be what, 3000? 4000 capacity places? That’s big and by the time it’s determined that the place is too small, it’s too late. Can’t move the location. It will really start to decrease the list of cities that are even able to host, JMO. Not much you can do about that except maybe jack up the ticket price to limit demand.
I’m sure nobody wants a lottery, including the AHA, but due to demand, AHA had to pick the best from a bunch of less than perfect options. The 20% more slots will help, but Philly was almost double the size of Seattle. So it’s impossible to estimate if 20% more is enough. Given the problems with registration last year, status quo is not the right way forward.
I think the changes are for sure in the right direction. I still would have liked to see maybe another ‘round’ added on in the way of qualifier competitions around the country. Try and get the ‘1st’ and ‘2nd’ round o the NHC to be of higher quality beers and thus reduce the number of entries that way.
but how big would the new 1st round have to be? it’s a challenge getting 10 or 11 clubs to volunteer organize and judges to judge 750 entries each. Either the first round would have to have a lot more sites so more clubs/judges or a lot more entries so just more judges.
In talking about using existing competitions. You medal at one of them you’re allowed to enter the 1st round of the nhc.
There was a lot of talk about that concept as well and just in trying to plan the logistics of it - oh boy. Not fun.
Dan, if you compete for a long time, you will have a certain bias against this. A 40+ beer in one competition will be a 32 in another. Then well respected folks give you great feedback the next time you put it out there. You can’t say that judging is an exact science.
My experience.
I agree that’s just how judging goes. The same thing will happen to you in the 1st and 2nd round of the NHC. It’s the nature of the beast. I’m not sure I see how that would be a negative against having qualifier competitions for the 1st round throughout the year. I can definitely see how logistically it would be a bit of work… But it seems to me it would be worth it.
Why not just seed the brewer, not the beers? Someone who competes a lot will have enough ribbons/medals to qualify. That would be a lot of record keeping for someone, though.
Sorry. Yes that’s what I meant. Of you medal you get an entry. That would account for up to the total number of medals times the total number of participating competitions. Any remaining slots could go into a raffle. I’m sure some of the won entries would go unclaimed.
I do see that someone would have to enter the data etc… I’m thinking an application would need to be written so you can have this take place at the competition level. The competitions request your AHA number upon registration if you wish to participate. I’m sure we could work with the major competition software folks and have an export created. I could easily help with writing an import tool for the AHA. I mean most of it would be automated at that point… I think most non-Michigan competitions I’ve entered use the open source BCOE&M software.
In my mind you are still essentially raising the cost of entering the NHC to lower demand. I don’t enter a lot of competitions partially because it’s an expense that I don’t need most of the time. But the NHC is an exception. As it is a highly respected contest I’m sure there are a lot of folks you aim for it as their one, or one of a very few, contests each year. If you are trying to gain entry to NHC by winning a separate qualifying event with it’s own entry fee you have again made it so someone who can afford to enter ten or hundreds of beers in contests all year long has a much greater chance of getting an entry than someone who has to refine and collect their very best efforts and enter only in 1 or 2 contests in the hope of winning on the merits of their entry rather than on surviving attrition.
there would only be 84 medals per competition. There will still be slots available for a lottery afterwards. Medaling in one of the competitions would only guarantee you a slot. I’m sure at least a portion of those slots will go unused in the NHC… so they would be slots (in addition to the un-claimed slots) that would go to the lottery. So in theory you could go on like you have been and still take you chances on a lottery or you could take steps to secure a position by helping out with the NHC the previous year or medaling in one of the selected comps. I think it would increase the quality of entries in the NHC.