Stuster,
A beer entered in the class of specialty beers and as a "poor richard" would be expected to have all the faults caused by a slow chill and uncontrolled ferment.
Darren did you judge the specialty category? If you did i'm looking forward to seeing your comments on the beer and why you reached the above conclusions. Fair enough as general comments for a Historic beer, but not IMO to my particular beer. ... and if you did judge I'd expect you to give the brewer the respect of letting them get their score sheets first before making statements of it's merit on a public forum.
If you didn't judge it, then your comments are purely speculative and have no foundation - and are being used purely to drag out an argument incorrectly.
Which part of my 18degree ferment (Wyeast ESB) would you call uncontrolled.
There are plenty of people on this forum who have tried the beer and funnily none made comments anything like yours.
I don't feel like i have to defend my beer ... but parents often get defensive of their children