FL State Championship and new judges

Great opportunity. Grab all the info you can.

DF
If you havent already, drop Midnight a line

I could swear it was he who was doing the "festival trailer" stuff.

even posted pictures, if I recall

good luck!!

sounds like a great day.....i'm glad you enjoyed it! i've been thinking of heading stateside for a judging seminar but they seem to come far enough north for me!

I was thinking last night, "I hope DF and Tim have posted about the judging classes", get up this morning and my thoughts have been answered.

Thanks! Good luck next year! I know you'll do the Brethren proud.

Good luck on your possible business venture DF. Please let us know how you fare on this idea of yours. I too have been trying to flesh out this stage of a business plan.

Ditto to what DF said.
The experience was worth it's weight in Brisket.
Learned a lot and saw the entire range of "excellence" :lol:
Had a team DQ for bloody chicken on one end and I gave my only 10s to the final brisket sample! Truly outstanding (but not as tender, moist, and tasty as DF's).
The big lesson was that scoring is a crapshoot and my hats are off to anyone who can do well consistantly.
Also learned that the regional judges down here want browm stuff and little sauce (except for one judge).
DF and I do not need to cook better, we need to cook brown stuff and will do great.
Anyone who gets a chance to do this in there area--do it-
TIM

Dave. I'd love to see an "inside the judge's tent post from you. I'm interested to see how your experiences differed from mine in CT.

Guess I could add a bit more.
My table had a great Table Captain and 4 judges with varied levels of experience, plus me and one other NEWBIE.
I am fortunate to have many years as an evaluator and was very comfortable in this role for BBQ. Evaluation is supposed to be a matter of taking the rules and the guidance ,looking at the "situation" with no pre-conceived notions, and then rendering judgement. I was careful to avoid comparing the meat prepared by DF or me, at keast until after the score was entered.
I really wish I could say all the Judges did the same. All but one at my table seemed to be objective and really "think it thru". Unfortunatley, on Judge was there to fill the leftover bag and wanted lots of sauce on everything. That judge thought that meat the consistency of mashed potatoes was perfect. The other new judge was still caught in the excitement of "real BBQ" and gave mostly 9's and 10's.
Overall, I feel the scoring was "creative" to the high side all around. I do think the best got scored as such most of the time. But, on the other end of the scale, the scores given were really high. But, our scoring system and the guidance given to new judges encourages high scores, so I guess it works for the region.
As it has been said often here, the judging remains a crapshoot. It would be a lot less of one if the judges were able to follow the guidlines. It will always be subjective, but there are bounds to how far we roam with personal preferences.
DF and I worked with a only 10 of the 30 Judges there and my experience with this one judge was probably unique to the room.
Also--someone down here decided that a little vinegar injection was good. A couple of other teams decided a bunch of vinegar must be better. HINT- if you open the box and vinegar burns your eyes, ya probably are using too much. 2 of our brisket boxes were this way and downgraded "way down" into the 8's :lol:

Thanks for the info guys.

Thats funny. "Way down" into the 8's