2008 Kitsap County Fair Homebrew Competition Results

Alan sent this to me and asked me to post it here
-Brad

Hi Mike,
I think Brad's response to your note was great and I'd like to add a couple notes to help reassure you and any other brewers interested in the competition.

We initiated the KCF homebrew competition back in 2006 as a way to encourage more homebrewing in the county and the region (we'll accept entries from anywhere in the world though we don't reach out to encourage that), and we wanted a good way to give all brewers detailed considered feedback on their products, not just scores but hopefully useful suggestions too. The first year there was a bit too much discussion during judging (mostly due to our excitement about the inaugural competition and some inexperience by our judges and in our organization of the event) and we worried that might be affecting the scores and notes so we completely discouraged that in '07 and '08. This year's judging was quieter than any brew competion I've ever been involved with and I've been involved with regional, national, and international events for many years. Of course there were the few interjections of "Wow!" or "Yumm!" or "Ewwww!" But they were shushed immediately. Even without verbal comments judges can pick up impressions from others based on nonverbal clues (did they finish their sample, did they ask for a more, did they spit and rinse furiously after a sample). We individually try to limit this and learn from each year's experience.

It's true that most of the top scores are going to active members in our club, though many new faces show up at the top too. In fact Drew's Irish Red received the highest personal score for this event from some of our judges. It's interesting, and probably inevitable, that those handful of brewers that have received scores in the top 10 in 2 or 3 of the KCF competitions are the most prolific brewers I know. They tend to brew almost every week and they consistently create wonderful elixirs even with beers that are new to them. Brad brewed a tripel for the first time this year and it won first in that category in the National Homebrew Competition. I'd hoped he would enter it in the KCF competition but he didn't have enough bottles left. In last year's judging I definitely recognized some familiar beers and I hope that didn't influence my scoring either upwards or downwards. This year I thought I'd recognized a couple beers and did my best to not let them influence me but in the end I found out my guesses were inaccurate anyways.

The top score in 2006 went to Dave Frombach who was not a member of the WSB at the time, though he has since joined. Last year Matt Riggs (president of the club that year) won a tight contest where 5 different beers could have been deemed the winner depending on the mathematical method used to calculate top score. Since we didn't foresee such a tight contest we hadn't declared such a method and had to go to an experience homebrewer, BJCP master, and organizer of various contests to determine the method to use. We went with straight mean average, no matter how many judges were involved with each entry and with no tossing of "anomalous" low or high scores. Of course, judges didn't judge their own beers, and we wondered whether or not to toss the scores from other judges who had enteries in the same category in which they judged. We analyzed the spread sheet and realized tossing their scores would not materially affect the final outcome. You'd be amazed how consistent the judges are throughout the competitions, one tends a little higher than average, one tends a little lower, etc.

This year Matt decided not to enter any beer though I kept encouraging him to. No matter how great and consistent your beers are you just don't get truly useful feedback outside of this type of competition. I'm not sure if he declined to enter this year mostly due to last year's win or due to the fact that he volunteered to mark up and sort all the entries for this year's competition. I did that one year and you always wonder if it can affect your subsequent judging of those beers via recognition of certain bottle/cap types or entry numbers. This year's winner John Altman said at the awards ceremony that he probably won't enter any beer next year. Again, I'm encouraging him to enter and will continue to do so. If there was a winning prize of substantial cash value I'm sure we'd put some rules about this in stone and publish them for all to see. As winning is mostly a matter of pride any perversion of the fairness of the competition or any hint of it being a mutual admiration society would remove almost any pride the top scorers would receive from this event. If nothing else, we'll always do our best to provide a fair competition since our beloved late member Bob Allen has his name on the trophy.

We have reached out to judges throughout the region and had some on standby this year and last in case we needed to move a round or two over to the Seattle side of the water. We purposely shortened the entry window this year to try and allow for as many judging rounds as we could with the idea of using only local judges if we could. It would be great if we could use the same judges for each entry, but that's a practical impossibility given the interest level we're now getting. It's true that none of the judges we've used are BJCP certified, and many of them, including me, have actively avoided such certification. Due to this competition we keep talking about getting a bunch of locals certified but have never made it happen, yet. Perhaps your suspicions will re-encourage some of us though I already get caught in the style trap too often and will continue to avoid certification. I've judged alongside highly ranked BJCP judges, professional brewers, international beer writers, publicans, beer geeks, and all sorts of folks. I have not noticed a consistent improvement in the judging capabilities of folks that have bothered to get their BJCP certification. I don't keep this a secret. I've talked about it with many BJCP folks and quite a few of them worry about this same phenomena. Sometimes getting the certification just makes the judges more particular about the style categories without adding any ability to give useful feedback or positive suggestions. At its best the BJCP certification should improve commercial brew competitions and ding breweries for entering beers in the wrong categories, but look at the results of any big competition and you'll see some oddities that make you wonder about that.

We would love to have 7-8 judges review every entry to the KCF competition each year. We would love it if every judge could give useful feedback and helpful suggestions. We will keep trying to improve the skills of our judges and We will continue to attempt to expand our judging pool since the short time between entry period and the fair is in a particularly difficult time of year for judges who are active family members. It also seems to be a time of year where allergies afflict a few of our judges each year. We never know if we're going to get 10 or 4 judges at any given session. If I entered a beer and it was unfortunate to end up in a low attended round or if some of the judges in my round were not the kind that can give detailed useful feedback I'd be a bit disappointed. We know this can be a problem and we'll continue to try to improve the event in every way possible. Hopefully you will join us in next year's judging we can use everybody we can get.

A friend of mine who has organized barley wine festivals was asked why he put on tap some seriously flawed beers. He said, "I hate to send any beer back, it's like telling a parent that his kid is ugly, and he smells funny too." It takes guts, and not a little arrogance, to enter a beer in competition and even more so to judge somebody else's homebrew. If a judge feels capable of only giving a score and no detailed feedback that's still useful to the competition if not to the entrant involved. If you look at our final competition spreadsheet you'd see that their scores were in line with those of other judges. We'll keep helping those judges improve in confidence and experience and hope that with enough judges of every entry every brewer will take something useful out of the competitions. At some competitions judges will use codes or pseudonyms instead of their real names. We've always encouraged our judges to use their real names and maybe even put down their contact info so the entrants can reach out for more feedback, or even rant about a bad score or comment. I was told that every judge used their real name on every scoresheet this year. I wasn't in charge of that this year so I don't know for sure but if so that's something we can be really proud about.

We continue considering a best of show round of judging, but that would necessitate 3 bottles entered and I'd guess about 25% of the entrants tell me each year that they didn't have 3 left, or they didn't want to part with 3 whole bottles of their favorite brews. Even having two raises problems. In those few beers that we did open a second bottle we always noticed substantial differences from the first bottle. Usually we wouldn't open a second unless there was a gusher or some serious flaw in the first bottle, but a couple times in rounds with many judges we opened the second bottle and the scores from the judges of the different bottles varied significantly. It's partly the nature of homebrew and our bottling methods. It does throw into doubt any best of show round. Hopefully all three entered bottles would be excellent but what if the first two were nearly perfect and the third seriously flawed? We consider all these things and continue to debate the best way to move forward.

I join Brad in thanking you for your feedback. We do take it to heart and we do consider it in subsequent events.

Skal, Alan J. Moum

p.s. I was just informed that out of 8 people who received prizes beyond ribbons in this year's competiton only two of them were active WSB members. I don't know if that's an official judgement or a casual count.