2013 NHC first round results?

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jwible204 said:
I have a feeling today will be the day. If not, hopefully I get the results back in the mail at least. Anyone receive theirs from Region 8 yet? They were supposed to have been sent out Friday/Saturday.
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That's what I thought about Friday and yesterday :mad: But I think you might be right about today.

A guy in my club also was in region 8 and as of this morning, didn't have his sheets either. From the talk yesterday, it sounds like my sheets are in the mail (NYC region 11). :ban:
 
jwible204 said:
I have a feeling today will be the day. If not, hopefully I get the results back in the mail at least. Anyone receive theirs from Region 8 yet? They were supposed to have been sent out Friday/Saturday.
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If you check back a couple pages, I believe people were posting regarding score sheets they received from Milwaukee. The only center I don't think anyone has received score sheets from yet is Atlanta.
 
Darwin18 said:
If you check back a couple pages, I believe people were posting regarding score sheets they received from Milwaukee. The only center I don't think anyone has received score sheets from yet is Atlanta.
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I got my Milwaukee results yesterday. (Live in New England... so you know how long USP mail takes.)
 
I think NY just went into the mail yesterday. Maybe tomorrow...but I'm still holding out hope it's in my mailbox when I get home.
 
Got mine back from Milwaukee and was pleasantly surprised. Nothing advanced but scored mid to upper thirties on 4 and upper 20s on the other two. Was actually surprised at how it shook out. Had a few 40+ scoresheets as well. Gonna do a better job prepping next year, I think.
 
What's the point of the status on the AHA website? It doesn't appear to mean anything. I thought Processed meant they were done going through everything and that scores were ready to go up, but that's been like that since Friday.
 
Who knows. The fact that people have had their score sheets mailed back to them well before the results have been posted is a joke. I've never had that happen with a competition before. Come on Atlanta, surprise me.
 
Darwin18 said:
Who knows. The fact that people have had their score sheets mailed back to them well before the results have been posted is a joke. I've never had that happen with a competition before. Come on Atlanta, surprise me.
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I got an email from the Atlanta organizer saying the score sheets were sent out today. I guess we'll get them right at May 3rd when all results are released.
 
I'll keep an eye out for them. Usually it doesn't take too long for mail to come from Atlanta to Raleigh. I wish Atlanta had considered emailing them out - would have been faster.
 
There was a big, white envelope in my mailbox when I got home. It wasn't my scoresheets but I could save some money on my car insurance if I act now though. :p
 
Got mine from Milwaukee today!
15d Roggenbier 25
22c irish stout aged in grape mead barrel 28
23a imperial peanut butter stout 31

This was my first ever competition so im pretty happy!
 
Got mine from Milwaukee too. 43 for my bourbon barrel RIS and it went to the mini-bos round, but didn't place. Still very happy with results and judges comments!
 
Got my Milwaukee score sheets today. A couple of high scores and mini-BOS advances but none placed.

Really disappointment in some of the comments for my sour beers though. A national BJCP judge complained that my fruit beer (Passionfruit Berliner) was "heavily infected" and to "check sanitation procedures for fruit prep and bottling." It's a Berliner, it's going to be acidic, have no hops or malt and will be dominated by the base beer acidity! Also, the "acidic acid" you taste is from the fruit...

Then there was the 17C entry (Syrah Lambic), one judge was at 35, and the other was at 19 before he bumped up his score to 23! The one that gave me a 19, was a National judge. His scoresheet was one of the most blank I've ever received and it complained 4 times about "bitterness": I used whole grapes with skin, those are grape tannins and oak tannins from the French oak chips! This beer has scored in the 38-42 range in a couple other comps, so I know it's good, but there is no way this is a 23 let alone 19 point beer!

Anyway enough ranting, I'm just glad to get score sheets back and learn from these comments. I can't say I agree with all the comments, but maybe that's the benefit of going to Homebrew meetings and getting a lot of feedback from many people instead of just two
 
soonami said:
I can't say I agree with all the comments, but maybe that's the benefit of going to Homebrew meetings and getting a lot of feedback from many people instead of just two
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In general national judges know their stuff. Their email addresses should be on the scoresheets. Shoot them a note and say "Hey, thanks for your comments on my beer at the _________ NHC Regional; I'm sure you won't remember this particular beer but here's the feedback you gave me. (add whatever feedback you would like to focus on) Now, my beer has done rather well at other competitions, so I would like to try to reconcile what you told me with comments I have received elsewhere. Here are my thoughts on your comments. (now add whatever you would like to say) If, in light of what I've just said, you have any further comments or feedback on my process that might help me improve future entries, please let me know by return email. Thank you very much for taking the time to consider my request, and for your service to homebrewers everywhere via your role as a National Beer Judge. Sincerely, ________"
 
Anyone from Milwaukee seen a place on a scoresheet yet?
Just wondering (hoping) maybe they left them off so we would have to wait until May 4th?
 
osagedr said:
In general national judges know their stuff. Their email addresses should be on the scoresheets. Shoot them a note and say "Hey, thanks for your comments on my beer at the _________ NHC Regional; I'm sure you won't remember this particular beer but here's the feedback you gave me. (add whatever feedback you would like to focus on) Now, my beer has done rather well at other competitions, so I would like to try to reconcile what you told me with comments I have received elsewhere. Here are my thoughts on your comments. (now add whatever you would like to say) If, in light of what I've just said, you have any further comments or feedback on my process that might help me improve future entries, please let me know by return email. Thank you very much for taking the time to consider my request, and for your service to homebrewers everywhere via your role as a National Beer Judge. Sincerely, ________"
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That's very good advice and I think I'll take you up on it. Although I think if a judge is scoring a beer in the teens, he didn't like it all, which is not something you can have a discussion about in my mind. But I will send that message.

I think part of it might just be evolving tastes, I think East Coast brewers and drinkers just have a certain aesthetic when it comes to certain styles that may fall on one end of the style spectrum when compared to another region. For instance, Amber Ales that do well in comps here tend to be more balanced, maltier, sweeter, caramel versions of pale ale, where's in California, they almost want a red tinge DIPA. Makes me wonder how the NYC judges might have scored the same beers
 
I can just imagine hundreds of homebrewers getting their envelope, like when Ralphie got his Little Orphan Annie decoder key and running into the bathroom for privacy while they check their scoresheets. :)
 
soonami said:
Really disappointment in some of the comments for my sour beers though. A national BJCP judge complained that my fruit beer (Passionfruit Berliner) was "heavily infected" and to "check sanitation procedures for fruit prep and bottling." It's a Berliner, it's going to be acidic, have no hops or malt and will be dominated by the base beer acidity! Also, the "acidic acid" you taste is from the fruit...
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Did they explain any rationale behind the infection comments? A visible ring around the bottle or a gusher, or did they just say "acidic" as their main descriptor?

Then there was the 17C entry (Syrah Lambic), one judge was at 35, and the other was at 19 before he bumped up his score to 23! The one that gave me a 19, was a National judge. His scoresheet was one of the most blank I've ever received and it complained 4 times about "bitterness": I used whole grapes with skin, those are grape tannins and oak tannins from the French oak chips! This beer has scored in the 38-42 range in a couple other comps, so I know it's good, but there is no way this is a 23 let alone 19 point beer!
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That is a really large scoring difference between the two judges. Sixteen points is huge, and generally you want both judges to be within 2 - 3 final points of each other. Sounds like for whatever reason he just did not like the beer. It sounds like a really cool beer though. Like others have said, I would send him an email and ask him if he recalls why he felt strongly about it.
 
sweetcell said:
maybe it's just me, but this piece of feedback isn't very helpful. they might as well tell me that i should "brew a better beer".
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I guess that depends on what you're doing with sanitation. If you can honestly say that you're doing everything you know to do to maintain ideal sanitation, then yes, just telling you to do it better doesn't help much. However, speaking for myself, I have plastic that's been around for a while. There are things that I do that I probably could do better. So I know that there are things that I could do to be more sanitary. So if I started seeing that comment with any frequency, it would let me know that its time to revisit those things.
 
sweetcell said:
maybe it's just me, but this piece of feedback isn't very helpful. they might as well tell me that i should "brew a better beer".
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OK, smartypants. Let's hear your better feedback for an infected beer. "Check sanitation" seems pretty appropriate to me. Without delving into process specifics for that brewer, which nobody has during a competition because everyone is just drinking from a bottle with a number on it, I personally cannot think of better advice to write down in that situation.



However, for sours in particular I agree that saying the beer is infected isn't particularly useful unless you couch it very specifically. E.g. is it acetic, solventy, etc. Every sour is infected and the important part is determining whether the infection is appropriate to style. The more specifically you can describe the aroma and flavor of the beer, the better chance of identifying the flaws. All that said, in terms of feedback there is nothing better to write, IMO, than "check sanitation procedures" for beers which are obviously infected with bad stuff. It may be obvious to most, but that doesn't make it incorrect.
 
Darwin18 said:
Did they explain any rationale behind the infection comments? A visible ring around the bottle or a gusher, or did they just say "acidic" as their main descriptor?
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sweetcell said:
maybe it's just me, but this piece of feedback isn't very helpful. they might as well tell me that i should "brew a better beer".
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The thing is, it was a sour beer! But I still treat it like I treat my clean beers albeit with a different set of plastic. Clean beers have no problem with sanitation. The judges did mention that the beer was cloudy, thin, and gushed a bit. I think it was because it's a no boil Berliner, so it never gets very clear in my experience even with a protein rest and cold conditioning. Since I added pasteurized passionfruit pulp, that isn't the source of contamination (if there is any) although it might have contributed to the cloudiness and the fruit fibers might have contributed nucleation points for the beer to gush since it was carbonated to 3.5 volumes.

BrewKnurd said:
I guess that depends on what you're doing with sanitation. If you can honestly say that you're doing everything you know to do to maintain ideal sanitation, then yes, just telling you to do it better doesn't help much. However, speaking for myself, I have plastic that's been around for a while. There are things that I do that I probably could do better. So I know that there are things that I could do to be more sanitary. So if I started seeing that comment with any frequency, it would let me know that its time to revisit those things.
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I have a different set of plastic (autosiphon, tubes, bottling bucket, wands, airlocks, stoppers, Better Bottles, etc) for sour beers. I mark everything that touchs bugs with red marker so I know not to mix it into use with clean beers. I've never had any clean beers get score sheets that said it was contaminated. Only this Berliner...

Darwin18 said:
That is a really large scoring difference between the two judges. Sixteen points is huge, and generally you want both judges to be within 2 - 3 final points of each other. Sounds like for whatever reason he just did not like the beer. It sounds like a really cool beer though. Like others have said, I would send him an email and ask him if he recalls why he felt strongly about it.
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That struck me as very strange, even the 12 point difference that they settled at seemed very far apart. I think that judge just plain didn't like it
 
The first line of the flavor description in the BJCP guide says "Clean lactic sourness dominates and can be quite
strong, although not so acidic as a lambic."

The judges usually have copies of the guide, so if there is a note about infection, it definitely would have been helpful for them to describe why the sourness that was detected was not "clean"...otherwise, definitely seems appropriate.

Any chance you kegged this bottle, or it was a bad bottle, and it was infected by something else other than lacto / brett?
 
sweetcell said:
maybe it's just me, but this piece of feedback isn't very helpful. they might as well tell me that i should "brew a better beer".
Click to expand...
I think the issue with that feedback is that it was useless within context. If you have a beer in a sour category and it has a sour character, 'check sanitation' just sounds wacky. I guess that's ultimately why I was disappointed with my scores and feedback. The only useful thing I got out of it would be that I should force carb with BeerGas. Other than that, most of their comments reflected what should have been base style appropriate, but apparently weren't to their tastes since the scores were middling.
 
soonami said:
I have a different set of plastic (autosiphon, tubes, bottling bucket, wands, airlocks, stoppers, Better Bottles, etc) for sour beers. I mark everything that touchs bugs with red marker so I know not to mix it into use with clean beers. I've never had any clean beers get score sheets that said it was contaminated. Only this Berliner...
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I hope it was clear that I wasn't challenging your sanitation practices, merely proposing that "check sanitation" could, in the proper context, be a more useful comment than "brew better beer." :p
 
BrewKnurd said:
I hope it was clear that I wasn't challenging your sanitation practices, merely proposing that "check sanitation" could, in the proper context, be a more useful comment than "brew better beer." :p
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I understand, I just wanted to clarify that sanitation is not an issue IMO

cwheel said:
The first line of the flavor description in the BJCP guide says "Clean lactic sourness dominates and can be quite
strong, although not so acidic as a lambic."

The judges usually have copies of the guide, so if there is a note about infection, it definitely would have been helpful for them to describe why the sourness that was detected was not "clean"...otherwise, definitely seems appropriate.

Any chance you kegged this bottle, or it was a bad bottle, and it was infected by something else other than lacto / brett?
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There were several references to "acidic acid" or acetic acid, but I think the judges were just mistaking whatever acid the passion fruit contributes for acetic. I think what might be at play is that it was 6th in a flight of 8 and that fruit beers tend to be sweeter, so when a hearty Berliner with tangy, sour fruit is tossed in after your tongue is used to sweet beers, it just tastes that much more sour. I wonder how this beer would have done at the beginning of the flight instead of near the end.

TobyG said:
I think the issue with that feedback is that it was useless within context. If you have a beer in a sour category and it has a sour character, 'check sanitation' just sounds wacky. I guess that's ultimately why I was disappointed with my scores and feedback. The only useful thing I got out of it would be that I should force carb with BeerGas. Other than that, most of their comments reflected what should have been base style appropriate, but apparently weren't to their tastes since the scores were middling.
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Yes, a National level judge told me the Berliner was "heavily infected" and to "check sanitation procedures for fruit prep and bottling." Very odd criticism for a sour beer with fruit. Here are some more comments:

2/12 for Aroma: "Aroma dominated by sour and acidic acid. No malt. No hops."

4/20 for Flavor: "Moderate sour and acidic acid flavor through. Not getting any malt or hops. Hint of Passionfruit. No brett."

And the Pièce de résistance is the attached score sheet. No Judge ID sticker. The description doesn't even sound like my beer. This judge says it's " Deep ruddy brown" the other calls it "jet black." Also, absolutely no smoke malt in this beer, although there is a lot of roasted malt. Also, no contamination issues noted. This is a beer that has been scored in the 38-41 range by National and Grand Master judges, but gets a 23 from this unnamed judge...

wWg68bx.jpg
 
Is there any BJCP ID on the sheet? (it's hard to tell from the picture)

I would send an email to the BJCP (Gordon Strong perhaps) with a clear copy of this scoresheet so they can advise the judge on how to properly complete one. It won't help you in this competition, but maybe it will help you or someone down the road.
 
Just got back from a mailbox without scoresheets in it. That got me thinking about this a different way. I figured that New York is doing me a favor. Odds that I'll have a beer go to second round are not good, but as long as there are no results posted and no scoresheets mailed, I still have something to look forward to and can still hold out hope.

So, thank-you New York!
:rolleyes:
 
stevo155 said:
Is there any BJCP ID on the sheet? (it's hard to tell from the picture)

I would send an email to the BJCP (Gordon Strong perhaps) with a clear copy of this scoresheet so they can advise the judge on how to properly complete one. It won't help you in this competition, but maybe it will help you or someone down the road.
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Nope nothing. Sorry it's such a bad picture, but I took it on my phone :rolleyes:
 
AnOldUR said:
Just got back from a mailbox without scoresheets in it. That got me thinking about this a different way. I figured that New York is doing me a favor. Odds that I'll have a beer go to second round are not good, but as long as there are no results posted and no scoresheets mailed, I still have something to look forward to and can still hold out hope.

So, thank-you New York!
:rolleyes:
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You could keep checking your mailbox so you can pretend to be as busy as a New Yorker.
 
No sheets from NY today.

The NY site director must have meant 'They are in the mail-ish' when he emailed me on Monday. Either that or the New York postal workers are busier than most postal workers.

Which would be a logical assumption.
 

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