We are happy to report that competition activity continues to be very strong. New registrations are processed at least once a week, and reports are updated in the database weekly. In this edition we want to focus on “sessions.” Many organizers are confusing flights with sessions. Since judging points are awarded based on the sessions judged in competitions, it’s important that we are all using the same nomenclature.
A flight is when two or more judges are seated for the purpose of judging a group of entries of beer, mead or cider. Typically, this will be 8 to 10 entries, but it could be as few as 3 and as many as the high teens. A session is a block of time set aside by the competition for judging purposes. Friday evening 7 to 10, Saturday morning 9 to 12, Saturday afternoon 1 to 4 and Saturday evening 6 to 9 are examples of sessions. Judges receive 0.5 point per judging session, with a 1.0 point minimum per competition and a maximum of 1.5 points per day. Typically, we judge one flight per session. However, we may be asked to judge another small flight within a session. Do help the organizer and do that. But points are not awarded for the number of flights judged, so the judge will only receive 0.5 points for the session even if they judge multiple small flights.
Note that judges do not receive points for a mini-Best of Show. A competition may assign multiple flights to a ribbon category. For example, 6 judges might be assigned as 3 pairs of 2 judges to judge 24 IPAs. In this case each pair will judge 8 IPAs if everyone judges at the same rate or one more or less if one pair is particularly slow. At the end of this judging process, then each pair picks their top three entries and 3 of the 6 judges (you don’t want an even number and typically we are dealing with no more than 1 half bottle/can so 3 is the maximum number of judges). It might be that a judging pair only has 1 or 2 excellent beers to pass to the mini-BOS, but to be fair, unless the others are very bad, 3 should be passed to judge in the mini-BOS – the top three entries in the entire ribbon category could have been judged by one pair. So go for it, judge the mini-BOS if asked, but there are no additional points for doing so.
Some competitions have organized around many small flights and judges just move from one to the next during the day. Again, judges are not awarded by the flights they judge but by the judging sessions. So the organizer can only award 1.0 point for this continuous judging from 9 am to 5 pm since that is the length of two sessions. Some competitions have multiple levels of judging. In addition to the first flights and a mini-BOS the entries from multiple flights are passed on to second round of judging. Since that is a full round of judging, typically done as a “best of show style” and in a second session it is not considered a mini-BOS and the judge can received 0.5 point for the session.
We hope that this explanation will help the competition organizers and the judges understand how judges’ time is awarded. If your organizer is not BJCP you might need to help them by explaining this to them.
David Houseman
BJCP Competition Director
Michael Bury
Assistant Competition Director