Are you guys ******* serious? This isn't
every child player gets a prize. It's the ******* nationals.
This is going to get long, but if I added up all the unjustified moaning in this thread, it will still be shorter...
Some anecdotes:
My first nats experience:
I can remember sitting in the shitter at ANHC3 when I was at my first nationals stewarding. I heard two judgy gents come up to the urinals and as they crossed swords they reflected on their day so far. One was having a ball. The other (who's room I was stewarding) reflected on the woeful service he was receiving. Stewards were not up to it. Beers were the wrong temperature. These guys are such ******* amateurs. No shit, mate. It's the Australian Amateur Brewing Competition. Some of these guys started brewing a month ago. They were still so passionate that they bough a plane ticket to Melbourne to come make this shit happen. Don't be such a primadona.
We don't want clowns running our comps, judging them, or stewarding them, but at the end of the day, this is an amateur comp made possible by passionate volunteers of all different levels of skill, experience, time and capabiltiy. It's still on the comp orgnisers to make sure the judges are the best we can get, the stewards are doing the best job they can, and that the results are posted as quickly as possible, but at the end of the day, this shit is extracurricular for
all of us. No one is a professional amateur brewer.
If you guys keep being whingy bitches about timing, your beer being 'robbed', the quality of your feedback, etc, you may find there's no bodies left to run a nats at all. Legit feedback is fine. Point it at the organisers, though. Moaning on a forum into the ether, when you didn't spring for the flights and hotel and weekend away from the family to help make it happen...that's kinda shitful.
Beer brewers have it easy, and hard:
I watched a rehearsal for the International Barista Awards a couple years back, it blew my mind. You don't send a coffee off in a bottle. You make a coffee. Actually, you make three or four....It's a performance. You have to work hard to get there, but then you have to work
when you get there. You make that coffee in front of these judges. There's a category which is the swimsuit comp of coffee - the specialty beer of coffee - you have to do some fucked up weird thing that represents you as a barista - and you have to do it then and there. This is not true for brewing competitions. Once you slap that entry number on the beer, it's in the hands of the beer gods.
- You brew a beer the best you can.
- You package it the best you can.
- You pack it the best you can....maybe...or maybe you just hand it to a drop off point and that homebrew shop or whatever may or may not do the best job it can.
- Then the pilot/courier/truckie transports it the best they can...unless they're a shitbag and don't.
- Then the volunteers at the state that was 'lucky' enough to 'get' nationals receive your beer. They will handle it the best they can. Accidents may happen. Hopefully few to none. There are potentially 140 entries in play to sort, group, order, chill, present...no shit that if one is lost you might not hear about it...they have about 30 big fish to fry..but they will try. This year we actually got a forewarning about a damaged bottle in transit on the eve of nats and were able to make good on it. We didn't expect that level of detail and focus, but we sure did appreciate it and recognise it was above and beyond. Perth didn't pack our box after all. We did.
- Then the judges get it. Maybe you have three judges that are more sensitive to a fault in your beer than the folks at state were. Maybe you have one judge that is more sensitive to a fault in your beer and that judge is a verbose, dominant personality who won't relent on their score (there are some, though thankfully rare completely belligerent judges). Maybe the state guys were doing their best but actually didn't know what they were doing. Maybe the state guys were supertaster AF and you managed to get three clowns at nats (highly unlikely). Maybe you had one infected/uncarbonated bottle in your batch and that was the one that you sent to nats. Maybe you should have rebrewed that beer but didn't. Maybe you rebrewed that beer and shouldn't have, or you should have brewed it better. It's almost like there are endless possibilities for you entering a beer into a competition that is entirely subjective...almost? No it's actually that.
Q&A:
Why did I only get two scoresheets?
Well, I might be out of line assuming, but I reckon it's because you only had two judges on your flight. Perth doesn't have 60 qualified judges. In fact, it doesn't have 60 randoms who think they know what tastes better than VB who are now 'judges'. This has happened in the past and it's far worse than having 'just' a couple experienced judges on your beer.
Perth made a good showing. Qualified judges from all across the country travelled to Perth,
at their own expense to judge
your beer. "Thanks fellas. I really appreciate how much effort people in this scene go to to make it count when it matters" is the correct response. You had your beer judged by two BJCP certified judges. Awesome! You only got 35? That's what the trained judges landed on on the day. That's a good score. You only got 19? Something happened. We all know a 19 beer doesn't make it to nationals. We don't think you're a shit brewer, we just think that beer, in front of us today, whether by handling or an accident or by action of brewer....was shit...in isolation. Make it again next year. Get to nats with it. Win champion beer with it. I can't wait to taste it.
Why do I have this weird tick and flick scoresheet?
This was the first time I'd judged using this sheet. In some ways it invites more detail than the traditional sheet - the intensity of fault measure is an awesome feature....but at the end of the day, there's no room for war and peace....but you know what? There's no time for war and peace either. I've got 20 speciality IPAs in front of me, I just judged 20 light lagers, and the sun is getting long in the west. I will give these beers the best assessment I can, but this isn't ******* story time. If you want feedback, join a homebrew club and ask that older fella who's been brewing since you were in nappies...or that uni kid who somehow manages to make fantastic beer every time with kit and kilo and a heat belt in a frat cupboard. Or anyone else. Enter a preparatory comp.
Nationals asks a pretty simple question: Is this beer the best representation of its style in Australia? We're not here to tell you you're decent.
This is the level of feedback I get when I enter CBIA awards.
View attachment 109717
"OMG RIPPED OFF NO DETAIL". Nah they just have a fuckload of entries to judge. Your beer got at least 5 minutes of judging. My beer here was probably lucky to get one minute. It still got judged by palates I respect...and even if I don't....they were the judges and I wasn't.
Why do I have trouble reading the scrawl on my sheet?
For me, personally, if you got a sheet from me, sorry. I have this weird retardation where I can't use a pen or pencil legibly. I've had doctors ask me what my secret is. I had my pen licence taken off me twice in two different states. I had to go do a test with this special needs assessment doctor to get a dispensation to use a laptop for my year 12 exams...these days kids use them every day.
But I digress and generalise....As denizens of the 21st century, we're not used to using pens with such intensity. Our hands cramp up. We don't have heaps of time. We are possibly a bit inebriated. Some of us have judged 40 beers by the time we get to yours. Don't like that? Me neither.. Get certified and buy a ******* plane ticket next year.
Why did my beer score 44 at state and 19 at nationals?
I have had beers lose tens of points from state to nationals. It sucks, but that's where the judges landed on the day. I have had beers just scrape into nationals and pull a first place when they got there. Cool! Great! I brewed a good beer, but I also had some planets align in about forty ******* solar systems, such is the random complexity of judging beer.
Maybe it was a shit beer. Maybe you got three shit judges (at either nats who robbed you or at state who fooled you). Maybe it had a harder time crossing the central deserts than Burke and Wills. Maybe you should have rebrewed that Hef. Maybe you shouldn't have rebrewed that Koslch, kegged it earlier than you should have, ran it through a filter you didn't own, know or understand (Ok this is me in 2011...live and learn.) Don't hate the judges, hate the game...potentially your game....
Judging. Is. A. Crapshoot.
Grab a beer you think is boss.
Have a sip. "**** yeah this beer is boss"
Then have a mouthful of carbonara. Your significant other makes some killer carbonara. Where's my invite?
Then have another sip. "Oooh it's heaps bitter now. That carbonara really fucked my palate ey?"
Then have a mouthful of jam toast.
Have another sip. "Kinda tastes watery. Is this the same beer? Also why did I follow Carbonara with Jam toast. I am weird."
Have a different beer.
Have another sip. "This beer definitely tastes different now."
Have a coffee.
Have another sip. "This Koslch tastes like water. It's not watery. It actually tastes like water. What a shit kolsch. I can't believe it got to nationals." (as another judge asks why the **** you're drinking coffee during a flight)
Have a berocca.
Have another sip. "Wow I really needed that berocca because there are like max 30 judges here and we're having to do back to back 20 beer flights and the timezone in Perth is four hours behind so I am already zoned out...but shit, that Berocca has really fucked my palate....where's that carbonara?"
Everyone's palate is sensitive to the pathway it has trodden. A subtle, young RIS might make the top three at the start of the flight, and a bold three year old might be written off as too brash and one dimensional. Put them at the end of the flight and the former is thin and watery and the latter is
fucccckinnnn siiiiiiick (because you've had 20 RIS's at this point...we don't spit....we have judged another flight....maybe we should spit....maybe we shouldn't judge two flights...but we can't fix that unless YOU come judge)
AndyD's comment that gravity helps the organisers sort a flight is valid in theory, but I don't think I've ever seen it executed. It should be, but at the end of the day, that's not a 'core duties' task on a compsec.
If we had a body running this stuff year to year we'd get there, but the existing establishment is resistant to change and improvement and a lack of drive to replace and refresh from any "new guard" means we are where we are.
At the end of the day, the nationals isn't the Melbourne Cup. The fastest horse might come last. Those clever names are but a name*. Any other beer will smell as hoppy...or as infected. It's a subjective comp.
* for the record, there are some really good puns in beer names going into nats and those who write them should be very proud. If nats was judged on pun quality...you gold medal winners know who you are...
The judges decide which beer is the best in any single flight. There is usually enough balance in a table to call out imbalance, bias, broken palate, preconceived ideas, general beligerence, being shit, being arrogant, etc...but a the end of the day, the judges' subjective opinion, right or wrong, is final. One year you might get fucked on, dropping a beer from 44 to 19. The next you might just scrape in from state and then and pull champion beer with 45....or 50.
We don't judge via a spectrometer. We judge imperfectly made beers, in imperfectly run comps, with imperfect noses and palates.
Imperfect...almost amateur. Funny that. I ******* love the AABC.
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