Thanks Will
There were 38 entries I believe. It took many hours to get through with 3 judges. We did not expect so many.
Things to bear in mind for future events of a similar nature. It will take longer than any estimate.
If we expect more than 30 beers, then more judges might be in order. Split the judging. Perhaps two judges per category with some getting two categories if there are a small number of entries in said categories and then all the judges get together at the end to pick best in show out of the top 3 in each category.
You could just take the highest scoring beer but in a split judging case I think all judges should have a say.
To save time yesterday, the three of us shared a BJCP judging sheet[/url:w8evtxau]. We numbered each comment if there were differing thoughts on what we picked up. The scoring worked very well that way. We each had a different thought to the scores but there was only a point in the difference usually so we split the difference which is precisely what would happen anyway if we had all filled in our own sheets separately. We made a good team since we all had similar thoughts about the beers with the exception of one or two that one or other of is simply did not like but was not perhaps flawed.
Another thing to note, don't lump all ales and bitters in to one category. Split them up.
If I remember correctly, Overall winner was [b:w8evtxau]Rossa [/b:w8evtxau]with his imperial stout (first place in stouts/porters). [b:w8evtxau]Mark Foley[/b:w8evtxau] won first place in the ales/bitters with a strong Scotch ale* followed by [b:w8evtxau]James [/b:w8evtxau]who recused himself when he realised it was his making [b:w8evtxau]Jacob [/b:w8evtxau]2nd place (no 3rd as a result). [b:w8evtxau]Shane Smith[/b:w8evtxau] won first place for his witbier followed by [b:w8evtxau]Mark Foley[/b:w8evtxau] with his quite low abv saison.
That's all I remember, there were two [b:w8evtxau]Dereks [/b:w8evtxau]who got runner ups in the stouts/porters and then some of the abbeyleix guys got runner up in the continental category.
I'm sure Axbrew will have official results posted on the website or here soon.
[i:w8evtxau]*The Scotch ale almost didn't make it as the sheet disappeared but I remembered it was the expected winner and we tracked it down. Sure enough it was the highest score so a good thing we searched.[/i:w8evtxau]
