Messages

1

Homebrew Competitions / Re: NHC regional experiences

« on: May 10, 2013, 07:02:53 AM »

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

2

Homebrew Competitions / Re: NHC regional experiences

« on: May 09, 2013, 08:02:48 PM »

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'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.

3

Homebrew Competitions / Re: NHC regional experiences

« on: April 22, 2013, 11:40:04 AM »

Thanks bbkf! 

From an organizers standpoint, I think it ran fairly smooth in Zanesville this weekend.  We judged 721 beers Friday - Sunday.  We were down about 20 judges compared to previous years that I have run the event.  We have a pretty good sized judge pool in our region so its not for lack of numbers. 

Reasons:

1.  I heard from numerous people that they were not judging this year cause they were frustrated with registration and/or having to ship their beers to a different region.

2. I heard from people that they were not entering or judging this year cause they were shut out of the conference and just did not care.

3. Several regional clubs had some events planned (normal meeting night, brewout, etc.)

On the flip side, we had a Friday session with 14 of 16 judges being National or higher and most other sessions were pushing closer to 20 of 50 being National or higher. 

Thanks to all that are lurking and came out to help!

Cheers,

Frank Barickman
"I'm not bitter"

4

Homebrew Competitions / Re: AHA Club Only Competition- Un-Session Ales Results 1/19/2013

« on: February 01, 2013, 02:57:57 PM »

Not that anyone cares, but I did find him.  Thanks.

5

Homebrew Competitions / Re: AHA Club Only Competition- Un-Session Ales Results 1/19/2013

« on: January 23, 2013, 04:08:15 PM »

Does anyone know how to get in touch with Abe Pilon?  I have no email, phone number, address, or even club name to get him back his score sheets.  If you know Abe, please have him contact me.

Frank

6

Homebrew Competitions / AHA Club Only Competition- Un-Session Ales Results 1/19/2013

« on: January 21, 2013, 01:32:04 PM »

The Un-Session AHA Club Only Competition is complete.  There were 73 entries from 28 different States.  Many entries traveled far.  We received entries from Key West, FL; Anchorage AL, 10 from California, and only 3 from the host state of Ohio (“Booo” to my home State!) 

Congratulations to:

1st- Adam Fulmer- Augusta Homebrewing Association-
“Hopstile Takeover IPA”- 14B American IPA

2nd- Jeff Lewis - Scioto Olentangy Darby Zymurgists-
“Greezy Smoke Bier” - 22A Classic Rauchbier

3rd- Bobby Mierzejwki – The Woodbridge Homebrewers Ale and Lager Enthusiast Society – “BBRIS” -22C Russian Imperial Stout aged in Oak Bourbon Barrel

Score sheets will be mailed later this week.

Thanks to all that entered!

Frank Barickman
Organizer