Uncoventional Homebrew Judging Ideas Anyone?

[gantelope]

For the past 10 years, the group I work in has been holding the coolest corporate event ever. . .OCTOBERFEST. Ok. . .lots of companies have their version of Octoberfest. . .but ours F'IN ROCKS cause it is all about HOMEBREW!!!. The grist of the event is as follows:

1. The company pays $35-$40 for ingredients to anyone in the group who wants to brew 5 gallons of beer (supporting our local homebrew shop of course).
2. We find a cool location to party (used to be Jenkins Estate in Beaverton), get some great local German food brought in, and start drinking.
3. The homebrew we made would be judged in two categories:

Master Brewer Award : this was done by a certified BJCP judge at our local HB shop

Peoples Choice Award : done by anyone who wanted to sit at a table, get rowdy and pick your favorite beer.

As a homebrewer this was cool for you got some feedback on your beers (both from a professional judge and from your peers) and if you won one of the awards. . .you got your name and beer on a plaque which you could hang in your cube for braggin rights till the following year.

The first 5-7 years were pretty manageable for we started out with ~100 people and ~12 brewers and maybe grew to ~200 and ~14 brewers. There was always more than enough beer for everyone and the judging was very simple and fun.

Fast forward to 2009 - our group has grown to +1000 people (expecting >600 to attend) - ~18 brewers (some doing double batches out of necessity) - and upwards of 25 beers to judge. . .how the hell are we going to manage this in a 4-5hour event?

We are still planning on going the BJCP judge route (though isn't that a heavy load for one dude?) and a few years back we added the Brewer's Choice Award where all the brewers can vote for their favorite 3 beers (not their own). . .but we are not sure how to handle the Peoples Choice Award this year. We want to continue with this for it is a great way to get people loosened and involved with the event. . .but logistically it seems like a pain in the ass!

Anyway. . .any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated!

Lope

[BDawg]

(Speaking as a BJCP judge-)

18 beers can be ok for 1 judge if it's done as a BOS round, but not judging as a regular BJCP event with score sheets and stuff. Simply too many and the judge's palate will fry and his wrist will shrivel up by the end of the session. We normally figure on about 12-15 mins per beer for a flight doing regular scoresheet judging. He'll be there for a LONG time if he has to do 18 by himself.

I'd get 4 BJCP (or otherwise qualified) judges, have them split the 18 beers into 2 flights, and have the 2 pairs each do 9 beers. You'll get more accurate judging (1 guy can have holes like not being able to percieve diacetyl), and you won't kill anybody by the end.
Each pair then picks their top 3, and those top 3 go to BOS. Winner comes out from that pool. The BOS winner will also be from a concensus, not simply the 1 guy's favorite style or the one that fits his "pet peeve" filter the best.

HTH-

[DannyW]

For the people's choice, set up a paper bag for each contestant. Write the name of the beer on the bag. Sell or hand out tickets for customers to drop in the bag of their favorite beer. If you sold the tickets, then do a 50/50 between the winning brewer and a randomly chosen customer.

[gantelope]

Thanks for the ideas! The paper bag is a great idea and I think if we do it that way we could have full participation from all attending and it would be easy!! Problem Solved!!

The BJCP judging is going to be a more of a challenge than I thought. I am now wondering if in the past all the beers were judged together or over time. Maybe we will have to round up some more judges and go the Best of Show route!

Thanks again!
Lope

[Bigbrews]

A couple of years ago I took a cheese making class through Washington State. In one of the sessions they talked about cheese competitions. The judging for these competition is divided into two sections per entry. One set of judges judges on what is good about the cheese and the other set judges on what is bad. There are 5 sections, aroma, appearance, texture, taste and some other thing I can't remember, maybe aftertaste. Up to 10 points are awarded per category, so there would be up to 50 from the bad and 50 from the good. The two are combined for a total score. While I was in this session, it occurred to me that most of the beer judging is focused on what is bad about the beer. I always thought it would be interesting to apply the cheese scoring method to a homebrew competition. This would assure that feedback was equally divided between good and bad.