While the Sam Adams Longshot competition is long done with (at least our part of choosing a beer to be considered by the company for release), it is still a fine memory as this is a premier event for the beer judge. Much thanks to Boston Beer Company for treating the judges so well. A hotel room and meals paid for is a great way of taking care of the judges. I thought I would be reporting on how a different score sheet was used,but the standard BJCP score sheet for maximum brewer feedback was used.The Grand Prize I spoke of in the last posting will be $5000 and Boston Beer Company will make your beer for their Longshot pack due out next year, if I am correct. Of course, that is up to them, and their company chooses the final winners. There are other judgings for this competition in other areas of the country.

The AHA conference now being over with, gives me a good reason to post some more information on judging events. This might be the Super Bowl of competitions (despite no Grand Prize like the Longshot competition),but the quality of this national (or is it world-wide) event is probably second to none. The beers I judged were high-quality and the ciders for Best Of Show were excellent. This competition did uses the score sheets I was expecting for the Longshot. They were along the lines of check boxes, making the judging more efficient, or at least more brief. The point is that there are more than one type of score sheet that can be used in a competition.

Next up for me is the Amador County Fair. No complaints on the quality of entries here which is always nice for the judge, but the quality of judging remains a high-point for competitions I am involved in. This makes it easy to advertise this event for the brewer who would like feedback on his or her beer, mead, or cider. There is also a commercial competition that takes place at the same time, in the same room. And this is the rare commercial competition that gets feedback for the professional brewer, and utilizes yet another type of score sheet. For more information go to www.brewangels.com or e-mail me at dteckam@beerjudgeschool.com

Hope to see you there on July 11th.

David