Competition Directorate
There have been many cancellations and postponements of competitions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many judging opportunities have been lost. We are seeing more new registrations as lockdowns have been lifted. But that doesn’t mean that judges, stewards and others should be lax in our safety measures. Be careful; be safe.
Cancellation Policy
First a reminder about competition postponements and cancellations. We are willing to postpone competitions for the organizer and to process cancellations when requested. However, in order to receive a refund for a cancellation, this must be done BEFORE the posted competition date. We made exceptions through June 30 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However we have now reverted to the formal cancellation policy, https://www.bjcp.org/docs/CompRefundPolicy.pdf. When contacting the Competition Director about any competition, don’t forget to include the Competition ID# so we can help you effectively.
New Competition Software
Recently, the Competition Directorate sat down with the developers, in Brazil, of a relatively new piece of competition software called Beer Awards Platform (BAP). In short, it’s a complete digital solution for beer competition organizers. From entry registration, to the handling of samples, electronic judging, sharing of score sheets with competitors and publication of results, its cloud-based application offers an intuitive interface to all users. For organizers, it has graphical tiles to easily organize flights and tables for example. It currently uses the beer “sliding scale” score sheets but work is underway to incorporate the other forms including mead and cider. Similar to another piece of software, Reggie, it can track data and records of past competitions but provides the judging experience as a more socially interactive experience outside of the actual event. Alongside Reggie and BCOE&M, BAP (https://beerawardsplatform.com/home/) is another solid option for organizer’s looking for software to ease the burden of competition management. All options can be found on the BJCP web site under Competition Software in the Competition Center.
Interactive PDF Judging Forms
As the COVID-19 pandemic quickly spread around the world, virtually all public events and facilities were shut down to halt the transmission of the virus. This obviously included homebrew competitions, the majority of those scheduled for the first half of the year being cancelled, postponed, or scaled back significantly.
In the five months since the pandemic began, there have been a lot of discussions regarding how and when we might be able to hold competitions again, with remotely becoming a real option with the widespread adoption and success of multiple teleconferencing platforms.
Enter the interactive PDF form version of the beer, mead, and cider scoresheets.
Each section of the scoresheet has been converted to a live text field, a radio button, or a checkbox, with appropriate groupings so the judges cannot accidentally check two conflicting boxes — for example, two different BJCP ranks, or marking a mead as both dry and sweet.
Additionally, the PDF only allows scores in the appropriate range (for example, 0 – 12 for beer Aroma), and automatically calculates the total score from the individual assigned section scores. It does not automatically calculate the assigned consensus score, of course, as that does not have to be the mathematical average of the judges’ overall scores.
There is also a checkbox underneath the Consensus Score to indicate if an entry went on to a mini-BOS round.
On page two of the PDF are the reset buttons, provided so judges can clear specific sections of the PDF, or the entire scoresheet, with a click. Options are provided to clear the comments, entry info, scores, judge info, fault checkboxes, or ALL. (These options were placed on page two, as there is no confirmation popup before the form is cleared, and there is NO UNDO.)
Please note, to save your comments in the pdf, you’ll need to select the ‘Save As’ option and not just simply ‘Save’ since the original pdf is essentially a template and can’t be overwritten.
The original focus of this project was to help facilitate remote judging, but an often-heard sentiment (from both judges and entrants) has been for a scoresheet than can be typed vs. handwritten, so these may remain a part of the competition landscape after the pandemic has ended. COVID has and will continue to change many aspects of our lives, directly and indirectly, so only time will tell if this method of writing scoresheets will become a generally accepted method!
These will eventually be posted to the BJCP website, perhaps in a revised form, but in the meantime you can download them here:
https://brewdrinkrepeat.com/BJCP/BJCP_Interactive_ALL.zip
Please let us know how they work for you, as well as any bug fixes or feature suggestions you might have. (And if you happen to be a Javascript developer and can assist in adding additional interactivity to the forms please let us know!)
We want to thank Brian Pylant for his work in creating these interactive PDFs.
David Houseman
BJCP Competition Director
Michael Bury
BJCP Assistant Competition Director