Did folk that entered Atlanta get your judging sheets yet? I have not.
I can see my scores online. What does Mini-BOS being checked mean on the online entry page?
It means that your entry was part of what’s called a “mini best of show” at the table where your beer was judged. At the NHC, that constituted the BJCP category it was entered into.
A mini best of show is a pool of the “best” entries each judge team chooses. From this “pool,” the entries are judged in the same manner as the competition’s overall best of show round - no Scoresheet is filled out for them typically.
For example, let’s say there are 40 entries at the table and four pairs of judges working their way through them. Each judge pair is usually instructed by the head judge that they can advance a certain number of entries to the mini-BOS - the judges certainly do not have to advance any to a mini-BOS if they do not feel any they judged are worthy.
Let’s say each judge pair sends three entries, so there are 12 entries in the mini-BOS pool. Two or more (preferably BJCP ranked) judges then evaluate each of the 12, choosing the first, second, and third place entries after discussion and debate.
Note that making it to the mini-BOS does not mean that an entry placed, it simply means that the entry stood out as a contender to place.
See http://www.bjcp.org/docs/MiniBOS.pdf for a more in-depth explanation.
I’ve been out of town this week so I just got to look at my score sheets last night from Zanesville. Looks like they switched my Belgian Dark and Golden Strong ales so they were judged incorrectly. I’m positive they were labeled correctly. That’s pretty frustrating.
1+ for Geoff’s explanation.
Congrats for making it to mini-BOS. That is something to be proud of. If my beers didn’t place the first thing I look for is to see if it made it to mini-BOS. It means that the judge team who evaluated my beer thought it was in the top 20-30% of beers in that flight. Most flights are between 8-12 beers and most judge teams will advance 2 or 3 of those beers to mini-BOS.
During the mini-BOS, the judges will rank the beers without regard to your previous score. Therefore, it is possible for a beer that scored lower on the scoresheet to win 1st place. This was very confusing for me the first time it happened to me. My beer got a 44 and the beer that won only scored a 42. How was that possible? Actually, the mini-BOS removes scoring bias between the judge teams and truely selects the best beer. Now that I have judged multiple mini-BOS rounds I understand this much better.
Yes we did indicate place and mini-bos on the summary sheets.
Thanks all for the feedback and education on min-BOS means!
I receive my score sheets from Atlanta on 5/4. I had some good beers and bad beers, and the comments for both were very helpful on how to make them all better. Nice job!
Hey Tygo, I was the organizer for Zanesville and apologize if something went wrong. With the method of check-in, scanners, and the label system that was used, it would be very hard for us to switch entries. Now that being said, when you are checking in 721 X 2 beers it could happen.
Entries were randomly unboxed at several 8x3 tables, they were grouped together (pairs of entries) and then both bottles were checked to make sure they matched. The pair was then labeled with a random number that had a judge barcode placed on it in three locations (plus the original barcode on the labeled bottle). From here, they were checked by one person again, and then handed to me (yes I personally scanned each entry). When scanned they were “checked in” automatically by the scanned barcodes. Both Entry and Judge barcodes were scanned. This eliminated errors from the labeled bottle disagreeing with the judge number because we never entered entries into a style category by hand. After scanned and entered into the “system” they were checked again by another person who confirmed they matched (both judge number, entry number, style, and that we had a pair) and then took to the case box for that style for storage until judged.
So basically, after all is said and done, the bottle label was read independently twice, then scanned, and then checked by another person to be placed in a “style” box for serving. From this process (which is anal), I fail to see how we could have screwed up being that the original labels were NOT removed until the time of judging by the cellar. Oh yea, at that time they were checked again and reconciled against the cellars pull sheet.
Nothings perfect. We did have a 10A American Pale Ale, that did not get judged correctly. It had a name of “3C” and got placed in the 3 “style” box at the time of check-in by a volunteer. During judging this was caught by the cellar when they checked entries against the pull sheets. Unfortunately we could not find it until the next day cause the box it was stored in (style 3 box) was the last box in storage and was not accessible. We searched VERY HARD for it with all the accessible case boxes we had access to in our cold storage (and we tore down the pile very hard!).
With all the checks and processes in place, I am not sure how this could have happened. I have entered many competitions personally, organized dozens of both large and small competitions, and from that try to run competitions in a manner that I would want my beer to be judged and handled.
So all that being said, I personally apologize if we screwed up and any frustration you may have. I can think of crazy scenarios where I suppose it could happen, but I question if potentially if you mislabeled it?
Please feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss this further.
Thanks
Frank Barickman
I appreciate the response Frank. I’m pretty sure I didn’t switch the labels but as you said, anything’s possible. I say pretty sure because I didn’t take a picture of it or anything. Either way, it’s beer and I’m over it. The feedback I got from the competition was overall very good.
Clint,
I hear ya, again, I am sorry. I will buy you a beer at NHC if you are going to Philly!
Now, what does disappoint me is that the judges did not bring it to the attention of my staff or me during judging. A good judge should always question an entry if its clearly out of style in a category. Its always worth having the organizer do a check in the system and see what they can determine.
I have seen this where the second bottle was correct (brewer or organizer switched a label or whatever) and I have seen it where it was still wrong and there was not another entry that the brewer could have switched (or even had another entry). Point is that the judge brought it to someones attention vs. just douche’n on it!
Glad to hear your feedback overall was generally good. In larger competitions, it’s always a challenge to make sure judges are doing what they “should” be doing!
Cheers brother!
Big Frank
I agree that the judges should have said something. I always do when one of the entries is crearly out of style.
I once had four beers in the NHC finals and two bottles apparently got mixed up. The notes on the braggot were, “this is a very good APA” and on the APA, “way too much honey flavor.” That was very disappointing.