I got a 35. Is that good?

So I entered my second all-grain brew ever (Vienna Lager) into an AHA homebrew competition and I scored a 35. It took second place in Amber Lagers and Hybrids which I’m pretty happy about. The score sheet hasn’t been uploaded yet but just curious if 35 is a decent score. I don’t have much of a frame of reference cause this is my first comp.

It’s rated very good as opposed to a max of 50 which is outstanding, so I’d say it’s a decent beer.

Read the comments, if any, and let us know what you can improve.

Also, look at the sample BJCP score sheets to determine the various score levels.

http://www.bjcp.org/docs/beer1.pdf

For your first comp, 35 is a very good score. It means you are on the right track, with some room to improve. :cheers:

That’s some nice feedback you got too. I hope to be able to explain things that well as I progress towards becoming a BJCP judge. Got a 30 on my first comp and a 35 is a score to be proud of!

You can’t always tell by the numbers although 35 is generally solid. Being second in the style category is pretty good, when you get a sheet it should say out of how many entries for the category.

Yeah I just talked to the coordinator I guess the scanner they had on sight mangled some of the score sheets so they are going to scan them in when he has some free time over the next week. The overall results of the comp were posted and I got 2nd out of 8 beers in that category. I’ll take it for my first comp!

I have been doing a lot of judging for our local competition the last couple of weeks. Most of the really good beers are scoring from mid 30s to low 40s. I rarely see anything over 45. I only saw a beer score 50 once. It was judged by a brewery owner that had very little experience with brewing/judging and a novice judge. The beer actually got 3rd place in the second round because there were two better beers in the second round. The fact that you placed at NHC is quite an accomplishment. Congratulations.

OK here is the scoresheet. I guess they had an issue scanning the sheets in the day of the competition so it took them 2 weeks to finally posted them.

Looks like the overall consensus was it was a little too “carmelly” or sweet which I totally agree with.

http://kotm-lmhba.us/scoresheets/015.pdf

The FG was 1.011 so not sure it’s an attenuation issue. Possibly some caramelzation in the kettle? I think I might use 830 next time instead of 820.

Recipe was:

Vienna malt - 47% (5 lbs)
Pilsner malt - 28% (3 lbs)
Munich malt (9 SRM) - 23% (2.5 lbs)
Carafa II - 2% (0.2 lbs)
1.5 oz Hallertauer @ 60
0.5 oz Hallertauer @ 10
WLP820 Oktoberfest/Marzen lager yeast

Fermented at 50deg for 10 days, raised to 60deg for 2 days. racked to secondary and lagered at 34 for 3 weeks.

Missed this reply. This wasn’t at NHC just a local competition but sanctioned by AHA. Only 200 or so entries