Competition Director’s Update

By David Houseman, Competition Director

This year the BJCP welcomed Michael Bury, GM II, as Assistant Competition Director.   As Michael has been coming up to speed, he has been focusing on resolving competitions with delinquent organizer reports.  Please help Michael, and your fellow judges, by pushing the organizers from the competitions in which you participate to get their organizer reports submitted on time.

The number of BJCP competitions and opportunities for BJCP judges to judge grew again in 2019.  The total number of competitions grew from 862 in 2018 to 895 in 2019, a 3.8% increase, with 41% of the AHA/BJCP Sanctioned Competitions held outside the USA.   However, the number of competitions in the USA dropped from 561 in 2018 to 525 in 2019, a 6.4% decline. The chart below shows the growth in competitions from 2003 to the end of 2019.   Growth was especially strong once again in Latin America. There were competitions in 7 new countries for the BJCP in 2019. There are now AHA/BJCP sanctioned competitions in 44 countries worldwide.  

We had competitions geographically dispersed as follows (2018 numbers are in parenthesis):

State of the Competition Director Union

This was a good year to be a BJCP judge.  The increase in the number of competitions has increased the opportunities to judge.   However, also the [manual] workload on the Competition Directorate; that is why we have put forward to IT, recommendations for the automation of much of the process.  Some recommendations to help us and you:

Register competitions at least 90 days prior to the competition date.  Otherwise the on-line organizer reporting site may not have your competition available when you try to file your organizer report.

File organizer reports on-line rather than submit XML files. Filing on-line reports is quick and simple and participants receive confirming emails.   Submit reports within the required 21-day timeframe.

When sending out emails soliciting judges be sure to use the Bcc field to hide the large email lists.   And be sure to indicate necessary information about the competition, like the date and location of the competition, in the body of the email.

After registering a competition, if you do not receive a registration email within 2 weeks, check your SPAM, JUNK, and TRASH email folders.   If you cannot find that email, contact the Competition Director. Don’t wait until after the competition date to look for the password to file your report.

If you need to contact the Competition Director about a competition, include the Competition ID#, as well as the Competition Name, in the email.

If you must cancel or delay your competition, contact the Competition Directorate BEFORE the listed competition date.   We can postpone the competition date rather than cancel the competition and perhaps provide a fee refund, but only if we are contacted PRIOR to the competition date.

Some of the most frequent questions posed by organizers and entrants are the following:

Why can’t I get my points for judging in a competition?  If you haven’t received your judging points within 21 days following the listed competition date there it is because the database has not been updated with the competition organizer report.   Competition organizers are required to file their reports within 21 days. If they file their reports on-line, BJCP participants will receive a confirmation email of their points received. If organizers submit XML file reports, these are only periodically loaded into the database and no confirming emails are sent to BJCP participants.  BJCP members need to long into the BJCP database to check their records. If competition organizers do not submit their reports in a timely manner, the point allocations will be delayed; contact the competition organizer!

How can I get my points from prior competitions?   If you participated in a competition prior to becoming a BJCP member, your points were credited to someone who was Non-BJCP.   Contract the IT Director with your name, your BJCP ID#, the Competition name, date, and competition ID#, if available, to have your retroactive points moved from a Non-BJCP record to your personal record.

Can we use style guidelines other than the BJCP’s?    Yes, competitions can use any style guidelines so long as they are published to both the entrants/brewers and the judges so that everyone is working to the same guidelines.   However, the BJCP recommends using the BJCP style guidelines whenever possible since the BJCP judges will be most familiar with them. There are a number of published style guidelines or those with local additions.

Can we use judging forms other than those provided by the BJCP?  Yes, any judging forms that provide feedback to the brewers/entrants can be used.   However, the BJCP judging forms are recommended as the BJCP judges are used to using them and will be more productive. The GABF and WBC use a different form that does meet the BJCP requirements for feedback.

What is the BJCP position on allowing cans to be entered in competitions? The BJCP doesn’t take an official position on the use of cans.  That is entirely up to the competition. However, everyone should consider the often need to re-cap bottles used in judging so that the remaining beer is available for a mini-Best of Show.   Cans are particularly difficult to retain carbonation and the aluminum conducts heat better than glass, so the beer judged in a mini-BOS may be at a disadvantage compared to those entries in bottles.    Additionally, with cans judges cannot provide visual feedback that we usually provide for bottled entries.  

Can we limit who enters our competition?    While the BJCP would discourage any discrimination, we do recognize that there are competitions that do limit the field of entrants.   State and county fairs often require that entries be only from the specific state or county. There are women brewer only competitions and club only competitions.   We sanction all of these.    

Must we seat all judges who want to judge?    Many competitions could not imagine turning away any judges, but in some areas there could be an excess of available judges.   We would recommend using all the judges you can and not turning any away, but this is up to each competition; the BJCP is not involved in telling competitions who can and cannot judge.   Competitions must balance their needs and support of the judging community with their ability to afford lunches and other variable costs. Also, if specific judges are known to be a problem or to create particularly poor judging forms the competition may choose not to accept those judges.   Conversely judges may choose not to support competitions that are not well organized or prove to be problematic to the judging community. This is volunteer by all involved.

How can I change some of the details of my competition, like the date or the competition URL? Competitions cannot, but we can.  This is because of the IT systems used for competitions.   We have proposed changes that will allow organizers to update their competition facts and even download recent judge lists when needed.   We hope this will be in place in the near future.

I received this terrible judging feedback for my beer; what will the BJCP do about it?   We do get these sorts of complaints on occasion. We tell the entrant that this is up to the competition organizer to resolve.   The BJCP tries to not be actively involved but let the competition organizer manage their own PR and competition results.   We then contact the competition organizer to try and mediate between the entrant and the judge. Organizers need to know that the competition reputation is critical to keep entrants submitting entries and to attract judges to judge.  So, it’s in their best interest to manage these issues in a professional and timely manner.

Tell me about how to run a competition (this usually comes from new organizers). We inform them about the Competition Handbook and other resources available on the Competition Center and the link to the Rules on that page.   There is a wealth of information for judges and many resources for international competitions.

There are a lot more opportunities to judge.   So, if you are traveling on vacation or business check out the city or country on the Scheduled Competition Calendar and volunteer to judge in a new locale while you are there.   And experienced judges, please be open to helping new organizers in your area plan and organize new competitions for the benefit of all the judges involved. Enjoy and good luck.   Have fun.