SD County Fair

[bwarbiany]

Yeah if I paid $6 for an entry and got that crap I'd be kinda pissed too!

That's the downside to competing. Judging can be hit or miss. It especially sucks when you were only looking for the feedback and not figuring on placing.

I wasn't sure... I thought it was a good, technically sound beer, and being a Belgian IPA in category 16E, had a shot at placing. So I was very surprised to see a score of 23. And then I was doubly surprised when I saw a bizarre comment like HSA. Triply surprised when I got the comment "possibly underattenuated" and used that as rational to find that I had >85% apparent attenuation.

I'm still holding out hope that this is a pretty darn good (and relatively fault-free) beer. There's some tweaking I want to do to better brew my intended beer, sure, but in a category like 16E needing to tweak the beer for my taste may not mean that it won't place.

I should probably stop complaining about this. Every time I do, I just get angry again.

[backyard brewer]

That's just the way it goes sometimes. The OC Fair is renown for this type of judging. That BOS beer I had also took first at Pac Brewers Cup, a first at Long Shot, including first runner up for BOS behind McDole's IPA and then didn't even place at IEB. I had a CAP that placed first at Mayfaire (over Virge Redmond and Mike McDole), second (I think) at PBC first (I think) at IEB and then not place at OC Fair, where I know it should have killed.

That's just part of entering subjective competitions.