I had this happen last year. I sent in a american brown ale that scored a 13! I went back and tasted the beer along with the notes and there was no way it was my beer. I was bummed. So I sent the same beer into another comp a week later and took Gold in the American Brown ale catagory with a 42.

I think it is understandable that a mix up happens every now and then. After all most beer comps are using volunteers and have alot of entries with rubber bands and bad handwriting. Never know.

Cheers!

I remember this type of thing happening at a comp I was stewarding. The bottle was obviously mislabeled but it didn't make any difference as it was massively infected. Spewed everywhere when I opened it.

Wayne

I've seen instances where the rubber band & bottle labels have been switched between the beers at entry time (ie, in your case, the blonde label went on the ipa, and vice versa).

Also, hop flavor and aroma can be severely suppressed if the beer is too cold when served to the judges. A decent judge will warm them up (or even request that the stewards bring some warm water to soak the bottles in before opening). Personally, I'd much rather judge beers that are too warm. That way, off flavors and aromas are much more pronounced. I've seen beers come out cold, and taste/smell fine at first, then degrade while they sit there. By the time mini-bos hits, they are throwing out diacetyl/phenolics/esters that never showed up when the beers are cold, and they get killed off at that point.

I know that the correct answer here is for the stewards to always bring beers out at 40F, but that isn't always possible. Some places have walk-ins that are just too cold. All you can do is try to warm them up on the spot before popping them.

At least you got score sheets. I entered the Pacific Gravity comp last year and never got my score sheets (they sure cashed my check though). No idea how I did, but I saw a beer with the same name credited to someone else (the name is quite unique) for second in the category.

You'd think that one would at least get a reply to their inquiry...

~widget

weird I didn't think they were supposed to send them out...so everyone had the same amount of time to get ready for the second round....now you would have more time than me to rebrew something if you needed too....

Just because the blonde got judged properly doesn't mean they weren't switched. Just last night, we had judges pour out an IPA that wasn't. I had them pop the second bottle, and it was the IPA. I did some digging, and it turns out this guy had also entered an English Brown. However, one of the beers got mixed up, so his two bottles in the IPA box were a brown and an IPA, and the same thing in the brown box. So depending on random chance, if this kind of error is made one beer may get judged just fine while the other is the mixed up beer. Thankfully for us, the brown and the IPA were sufficiently distant categories that the judges immediately knew something was wrong and we could get both beers judged properly (it helps being able to look at the bottle and distinguish the beers).

Keep in mind this kind of error could be your fault, or it could be the competition's. No way to tell. We all try our best, but don't claim to be perfect.

+1. Would be nice to know early!

Yeah ... I could see that being possible for some comps, but you only send in one bottle for the NHC first round.