NHC Midwest Regional

OK, today Poker is considered a sport right? They broadcast it on ESPN after all. Then beer judging in competitions could be considered a sport as well, if there was a competitive angle between judges. At least this is my thoughts after this weekends National Homebrew Competition Midwest Regional round of judging at Capital Brewery in Middleton Wisconsin. I have judged big flights of beers, and I have judged fairly large competitions…..but I have never been exposed to something of this nature before. My day went like this. At 9am we had our calibration beer. Then we started the actual rounds of judging. Throughout the day I went through 34 labels to put on my scoresheets, which means that I judged 34 beers. I was also the lead judge on two tables, so I had to partake in 2 best of show rounds to find out what three beers from the category would advance to the final rounds. These best of shows 8 beers in one table and 12 on another. This comes out to having 55 different beers cross my lips that day. And I was by far not a unique case. The judging lasted from 9am to just after 5:30pm. Which is a good average actually, it comes out to judging one beer every 6.7 minutes with a 1/2 hour lunch.

The competition was well run and very well organized.The whole thing was run by the Madison Homebrewers and Tasters Guild, who did a bang up job on the competition. I really have to tip my hat to those guys. It was really well run.  They even had their judging assignments figured out to not allow any judges to judge in a category they were entered in (pretty standard for all competitions), mixed up judges the best they could to mix up clubs, and paired experienced judges with inexperienced judges. That may not sound that hard, but I think mixing up all three in a competition this size would have been tough. Also, I think perhaps the online registration made things run a lot more smoothly than a hand checking method. If I remember correctly the competition was maxed out at 750 entries and there were just over 50 judges. So right there you know you are in for a big run.

Now, I know there was no way around this. It was a huge competition. But I felt bad that night when thinking about the last round I judged. It turned out to be a big flight (which I think all the flights were big by regular competition standards), and I think my judging skills were shot. I was tired, my palate was extremely fatigued, and my nose didn’t seem to be picking up much of anything at that point.  Here is where is seemed a lot like a sport. You can’t just give up. You have to push through, re-evaluate your body and try to reset yourself in some way to evaluate that beer. Someone on the other end of that paper paid good money to have you evaluate that beer. You can never lose sight of that. And I think that is where I think my bad feelings were coming from. I just don’t feel those people in those last flights get the same quality as those in the early flights. Unfortunately, that’s just the nature of the beast. But still, even though you do the best you can at that point, you just are not fresh enough to give a good evaluation. I’m not even mentioning how tired your wrist and forearm are from writing all day. Wah Wah….I know.

All in all though, I personally had no real bad beers that day. I think the lowest score I gave was a 24 or 25. Nothing below 20. However, there were some tables who got beers like this one.

Is this a beer or our breakfast muffins?

If you send a beer like this to competition, I can pretty much assure you that it will not do well. I just hope the reason it was sent in was to help find out what went wrong, and not actually expecting an excellent score. Unless of course, this was a freak bottle from that person’s batch. Normally, a gusher like this is a sure sign of some sort of infection, and the tasting of this beer did prove it. I did not taste it, I have had enough infected beer in my day to know what it probably tasted like, but the guys next to me who did get this beer gave it a full evaluation. So kudos to them :) This beer continued to gush even when half full, and for about 15 minutes after the pour.

A highlight of the day came after the judging was over. The Madison Homebrewer and Tasters Guild took good care of us. After judging there was a party at Capital brewery where there were several beers on tap, including the Blonde Dopplebock, Hopplebock (a blonde dopplebock highly hopped with Tettnanger if I remember correctly), and Capital Vintage Ale among other Capital beers. However there was also a Three Floyds Berliner Weisse on tap as well as the Ale House’s Hopalicious. We also had a brewery tour where we got to taste a beer I can’t recall exactly which one, right from the fermentor. I think it was a weizenbock, but I could be wrong because I had a few beers and some mead by that time.

So in the end, it was a lot of hard work judging all those entries. But it was well worth the three hour trip for me. I got to meet some people, experience a competition of this size, and hang out with a room full of beer lovers. It was a good time!