Competition judging reflections – VERY long!

My wife and I have now used our judging certifications for the first time!  We judged the Madison Ribberfest KCBS sanctioned barbecue competition in Indiana.  The good news was that all the judges were certified judges, which, from what I hear, isn’t very common.  The bad news (not really that bad) was that some judges didn’t show (or call even), so we had to do an extra entry per category. 

Last week, I posted some of my preconceptions, so I thought I’d just reflect on those to see how right or wrong I was, and I’ll add some more observations afterward.

• Some judges will take themselves too seriously.  Ok, a lot of
  teams spent a good amount of money to be there, but it’s barbecue, not
  life and death.  It should be fun, and judges shouldn’t think they’re
  more important than the cooks… Without judges, there’s still great
  barbecue.  Without cooks, there’s nothing to judge!

Some judges very much took themselves too seriously.  It’s interesting to see the other side of competitions after competing a few times.  Judges didn’t really have any sense of the teams and what they go through to enter food.  One judge thought it was really something that another judge had judged over 100 competitions.  That’s commitment, but, let’s face it, it means he committed to eating barbecue (free barbecue at that!) over 100 times.  Not something to attribute any glory to.  On the other hand, Bar-B-Quau took grand champion, and is the first team ever to get 5 triple-point grand championships EVER!  Now that’s something to write home about!  I don’t know if you’re reading this, Mike and Beth, but WOW!  Congratulations!  Oh, by the way, they have a great time at the comps and don’t take themselves too seriously!

• Some judges will have negative attitudes.  This goes along with the
  first item.  Judges should be conditioned to err in the direction of
  the cook.  If there’s a question, mark up, not down.

I was a bit off on this, though one or two judges at my table acted as though they really knew barbecue.  I didn’t like the fact that they were kind of comparing to a standard in their mind (one actually said he scored down if he thought he could do better at home).  The attitude of erring on the side of the team seemed to not exist much.

I will say that I felt I was hard on some entries.  The reason was that I was really disappointed in what came across our table.  If I felt it was truly a bad example of barbecue, I scored it as such.  On the other hand, if I liked something, I scored accordingly, too.  I didn’t see ANY 9′s in barbecue presentation, though I got a couple in taste and more in texture, I think.  However, if I was considering between 6 and 7, let’s say, I gave a 7 every time.

• Some judges won’t have a clue about what they’re doing.  Some will
  judge taste and tenderness on what they like, not on what the entry is
  or what barbecue is necessarily supposed to be.  Some will want sauce
  and mark down dry entries.  Some won’t like sauce and will mark down
  sauced entries.  Some will think ribs are supposed to fall of the bone
  and will mark down ribs that bite off the bone instead.  This is why
  the KCBS throws out the low score!

I heard a lot of comments about not liking certain spices or too much heat.  Nothing I tried was hot enough to count down for it.  One comment about too much cinnamon was valid, but I felt some judges were basing too much on personal taste.

• I’ll probably be hungry when I start, and barely able to eat
  anything when I’m done.  I’ll try to pace myself, but we’ll see how I
  do when I report back next week!

I paced myself ok.  By the time I finished pork, I was starting to feel it, though!  Brisket was a bit much, but then we had a break with sauce (you don’t eat much of that), then finished with seafood and dessert.

• Someone will change a score once it’s written down.  This may be
  someone that decides that the appearance score should have been lower
  or higher or they started to compare entries.  Each entry is to be
  judged on its own, so you do whatever you’re judging, write down that
  entry’s score, then move on to the next entry.

I was dead wrong on this one.  I thought it was odd that people hid their score sheets as though others would copy off of them, though.  My table seemed to do very well at judging each entry, then moving on to the next.

• I will end up with a piece of chicken that I can’t stand.  I don’t know why I think this, I just do!

Man on man, was I right on this one!  The fourth entry for chicken was pulled chicken.  For appearance, it looked to me like dog food, no kidding.  When I got some try taste, I honestly couldn’t keep it in my mouth!  Not only was it as cold as it could have been, but the team that entered it didn’t even remove the fat from the meat.  It was horrible, and I hope it finished dead last!

• Ribs will be very sweet.  I mean VERY sweet!

Another one I got right.  I had one rib that I gave a 9 for taste.  I had 2 that I gave 5′s.  One of them looked bad, with ragged cuts, and it tasted worse!  Most of the entries looked decent but had no flavor to them but sweet.  I don’t mind sweet, but I want to have something to back it up!

• There will be no disqualifications at my table.  These aren’t very common, so it’s not a stretch to say this one.

There were no DQ’s, though there could have been one.  The best of the pulled pork entries we got had a hair in it in the sample the judge had next to me.  She didn’t mention it, though, as it was obviously not intentionally, but, unfortunately, it got counted down in texture, I think.  For me, it was by far the best tasting of the pork entries we had.

• After the judging, someone will complain that the judging was too
  inconsistent.  However, the typical teams will be at the top of the
  results again, disproving that judging is inconsistent.  Look at it
  this way… If I am judging at a lower standard than the judge next to
  me, one of two things will happen: 1. my score will be thrown out as
  low score, or 2. my other scores will also reflect the same bias toward
  lower scores.  Where this is potentially bad, however, is where
  different tables don’t have similar situations.  However, I go back to
  my original thoughts on inconsistent judging in comps… When you sign
  up to compete in any event that’s decided by human opinion, you’re
  taking the chance that inconsistencies will exist.  Sucketh it up!

I haven’t heard yet, so I can’t comment on whether anyone is complaining about the judging.  I was surprised, however, that the rest of my table didn’t seem to score a cheesecake entry as highly as I did.  I know cheesecake, and one of the entries we had in dessert was a VERY well done cheesecake!  It also looked great, though there were some much fancier presentations.  As a cheesecake, I gave it a 999 score.

• After it’s all over, I’ll be tired of barbecue for a while.  I figure at least until the next day.

I smoked 2 chickens, some sausage and 3 dozen ABT’s on Sunday.  

Other observations:
Actually, I felt a bit cheated, as I wasn’t that impressed with a lot of what I tried.  I didn’t see any presentations that gave me any real ideas, either.  The brisket entries were sloppy; only one was very good taste-wise, and most were undercooked for texture.  None of the entries were trimmed to the box or had the fat trimmed at all off of it.  Only one entry had any flavor at all, I thought.

The judge next to me warned me to get a few paper towels handy for chicken, and he was right.  It’s a mess to pick up, and you need to get as much sauce off your fingers between entries as possible.

I was surprised that we weren’t told to eat crackers and drink water between entries.  Both were there, but the judge to my right didn’t do anything between entries, which I think was a gross disservice to the teams.  There is NO possible way that he could judge each entry on its own while still have the taste of the last entry on his palette!  I should have mentioned something to our table captain, but he was pulling double duty and judging, too.

I was interested to hear what the other judges said about ribs.  I like to lay ribs flat to show they’re from the same rack, but one of the judges said he likes to see at least one rib on its side so he can judge the meat, not just the sauce on the meat for appearance.  A few teams did competition cut ribs (cutting all the meat between the bones onto one rib).  This takes 3 times as many ribs to complete a turn in, and I have to say that I didn’t care for it.  If the ribs are well cut, there’s more than enough meat to sample, as judges are only taking a couple bites usually.  I’d not recommend that teams do this style cut, as the regularly cut ribs have better appearance, I think.

When doing pork, a team can turn in pulled, chopped or sliced pork.  Teams need to be more careful about turning in multiple forms of pork; more than one entry lost points by doing this.  The sliced pork might have been great, but the pulled was dry.  Some were way over-sauced, but only one entry was good enough that I would have wanted more of it.  Most were bland as could be.  One entry had great bark, but the meat itself had zero flavor.  This makes me feel that our injection is the right way to go, giving the meat some flavor.  There was also a marked absence of smoke flavor, I thought.

I know this was long, but I wanted to get my thoughts down before I got too far away from the event.  Any comments are welcome, as always!

 

One final thing: I posted this Saturday night on the BBQ Brethren board…
In the spirit of passing on as much competition info as I can, I’m including it here, too:
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Just got back a couple hours ago from Madison.  I don’t know the winners, as we left right after the judging.

Here are my main impressions from the weekend (I’ll add more on my blog later):

1. The Ribberfest treats the judges pretty well. They had a nice
reception on Friday, and had everything pretty well organized today.
2. There were a couple of judges that took it too seriously, as I
expected. There were judges that really thought a lot of some judges
that had judged a lot of comps… not cooked, but judged. There’s
nothing wrong with that, but…
3. Judging isn’t hard to do at all… Cooking for a comp is a lot more than judging for several. 
4. Maybe most important, I didn’t think any of the entries I judges
were any better, or often as good as, what we turn in. I think we’re on
the right track.
5. A lot of judges go too much by what they like or don’t like, not if the entry is good on its own. 
6. I really hate the take home coolers, though what I saw didn’t seem to get misused.
7. I think cooks are in general more friendly than judges,though most of the judges today were pretty friendly.
8. My wife said there was a lot of bad brisket!
9. Dessert is a nice way to end the day; after very mediocre barbecue for the most part, the desserts were great!
10. It was kind of nice to go to a comp and NOT have to do all that work! (though I missed it at the same time)