That’s exactly why I entered, to get feedback. Plus by stewarding for the day, I got to taste a ton of beer and here feedback straight away from the judges. Of the beers that were not so good, it seems a lot of people rush through primary without letting the yeast finish up, and that leaves faults in the beer.
Personally I’ve realised I’m leaving too much headspace in the bottle, and that’s prematurely aging my beer, and there were some oxidation comments as well. So I’m going to leave 1” max headspace in the future, and I’m starting work on a counter pressure filler bottling station.
The judges noted some malt/ingredient factors plus one on water chemistry as well that I’ve already addressed since making the beers I entered. So there were some quite clever feedback comments.
The IIPA I entered was well past it’s best, but still scored ok. Had I entered it when it was fresh I can see it would have done really well. So that’s another thing I learnt if you want to score well. Brew so your beers are at their best at the time of judging. I’m going to enter my third place Imperial Stout again next year and I’ll be very interested to see how it scores then.