Pre-competition tasting meets

[Shanna]

Absolutely shiny. The judges would be sitting separately to the rest of the meet.

Would be good for the entrants not to know who scored the beer as it would allow the judges to be more honest. But then the entrants lose the ability to review the scoresheet with the judge and ask questions. This is the advantage that face to face meets have over most competitions. One of the big draws here is that we're combining proper BJCP scoring with interactive Q&A. All optional of course. It's up to the individual clubs to decide on the format that works best for them.

I would dearly love to have the Q&A aspect as being able to tease out the flaws & the reasons behind it does wonders for improving things. I would hope that people would be able to take constructive criticism/feedback in their stride. In addition I would think it would do no harm for judges to back up there remarks for those not as informed/experience. At the very least it would allow comments to be explained as some feedback I have gotten in comps has been almost illegible (not that it would make much difference to my beer

Shanna

[molc]

Happy to do it for scd or any of the other Dublin club's, but need an experienced judge with me to catch stuff I'm going to miss.

[beerfly]

It's defiantly the way to go. You really should not be entering beers into the nationals you know are flawed.
The feedback you get will usually just be a general these are the common causes type response as the judges don't know the receipe or brewing conditions.
The club level does not need to be strict comp condiditions.
You can judge the beer as you would in a comp. Then look at the brew sheet and have a good idea where improvements can be made rather then guessing.
At the end you can also have the name and talk to them directly afterwards.

[molc]

It's November now, so if people want to do something like this and still get a chance to rebrew before the comp, now is the time.

[Bubbles]

I'm planning a South Dublin Brewers meet at the beginning of December to do some proper scoresheet evaluation. I already have a judge lined up. Details to follow..