What would you do?

[Brewboy]

NHC Category 20 Entry‏
From: Dottie Clapp
Sent: Sat 4/03/10 10:13 PM
To: scott.townson

Hi Scott! We completed sorting of the 748 entries for the NHC Old West region today and I discovered that 1 of our sorters accidentally mislabled a few of the category 20 entries. Unless your bottle had "raised" hop leaf vines going around it, or it had a gold cap (versus a silver cap), I'm not able to distinguish your entry from a couple other category 20 entries. Let me know if the bottle with the raised hop leaf vines on it is yours, or the 1 with the gold cap, otherwise all I can do is apologize for the sorting mistake and see if you'd like to send a replacement bottle directly to me for that category. Let me know. Thanks so much and again, I apologize for the mistake!

Dottie Clapp
2010 NHC Old West Site Director

Found this in my inbox today. My fruit beer has silver cap and non-raised bottles. JMHO but BJCP should cover the shipping for a FUBAR like this.

[kingsbrew]

That is very embarrassing for them. I agree, the AHA should offer to pay for shipping for a replacement or refund your entry if you wish.

[donniestyle]

Double that. That's the least they can do. You should get a free entry for every snafu they caused. I'd ask them to pay for shipping.

[Mike Grover]

At the very least you should demand a shrubbery.

[Bill Lawrence]

Boy you guys are brutal. At least they fessed up to the error so there would be a chance to fix the problem. If you were dealing with me, I would just gin up a generic score sheet with average scores and you would never know the difference. Of course, my credibility is a bit suspect (as evidenced by my extensive police record although only a few felonies) and I work for lawyers so what do you expect?

As an aside, I wonder how many entries get screwed up at a large competition like the Bluebonnet? Given that there were somewhere around 1,600 entries, I would be just amazed if every score sheet received actually represented what was originally submitted. Anybody care to hazard a guess as to what the error percentage rate is in a really big competition where the people handling the entries are less than, shall we say, completely sober?

[Brewboy]

Bill, you are a softie. I told them to just refund my $9 entry fee (like that's going to happen). The other option is to open and sniff, I doubt anyone else had the same combination as mine. It's rather unique. They can ID by the description.

[kingsbrew]

As an aside, I wonder how many entries get screwed up at a large competition like the Bluebonnet? Given that there were somewhere around 1,600 entries, I would be just amazed if every score sheet received actually represented what was originally submitted. Anybody care to hazard a guess as to what the error percentage rate is in a really big competition where the people handling the entries are less than, shall we say, completely sober?

Bill, I wondered the same thing when I saw this. Maybe there is a different answer to incorrect comments about my beer than a bad judge. Hmmmmm.

That being said, as long as you leave the entry labels on until the random number is assigned, recorded and placed on the bottle it should not be an issue. As far as I know they do a good job of that at Bluebonnet. Those people working that line didn't have much time to drink unless someone took their place. That line was probably the better organized part of the process. Actually, more entries may have made the less than sober part an unlikely occurrence.

[Bill Lawrence]

Oh, I think they do a very good job at the Bluebonnet, especially considering the way the entries are received. Over the years, I have heard plenty of griping about the quality of the judging but I can't remember any complaints related to mixed up entries and the like. I guess what I was really trying to say though is that in any human endevor, there is going to be error inherent in the activity. Unfortunately in Scott's case, he happened to be the recipient of the error this time. I almost hate to say this because I don't want to restart the whole "luck" argument but, this is just one of the the many chance occurances (that has nothing to do with making good beer) that conspire to deny us the accolades we so justly deserve. This sort of thing is why some folks double enter in competitions assuming of course that the competition rules allow that strategy. By the way, I would guess that the error rate in terms of misidentifying individual entries is somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5% which is somewhere around 2 to 8 beers, a very acceptable accuracy standard in my opinion.