Yeah, I was pissed about the 71 ranking and even moreso that we got smoked by our defectors who finished in the mid 30s, but after seeing our individual judges' scores, it's apparent that we had a winning product, but just not a winning set of judges, a theme that is constant and well known among the cooks at MIM. For example, we had one blind judge gave us an overall impression score of 9.9 out of a possible 10. That's a top ten kinda score. Unfortunately, we had one blind judge go and score us with an 8.8 overall score which is absolute shit. Maybe we had a bad sample in the blind, or maybe we got a shit judge. All I know is that we had some legitimately awesome numbers even three 10s and two 9s in tenderness, which to my knowledge, has never happened before. I wish I still had the scorecards from years past to compare, so if any of you, perhaps jen or john, have them, email them to me.
Well, here are the raw scores:
MEMPHIS IN MAY WCBCC 2012 05/22/12
MAGICALLY PIGLICIOUS AREA: 093
RIB CATEGORY PRELIMINARY ROUND
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J1 J2 J3 J4 J5 J6 J7
AREA & PERSONAL APPEARANCE 10* 10 10 BJ BJ BJ BJ
PRESENTATION 10 10 9* BJ BJ BJ BJ
APPEARANCE OF ENTRY 9* 10 10 9 10 10 10
TENDERNESS OF ENTRY 9 10 10 10 8* 8 9
FLAVOR OF ENTRY 9* 10 10 9 10 9 10
OVERALL IMPRESSION 9.5 9.9 10 9.4 9.5 8.8* 9.9
TOTAL SCORE - 983.6 '*' INDICATES DROPPED LOW CRITERIA SCORE
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ONSITE JUDGE NUMBER (J1-J3) MAY NOT MATCH THE JUDGING ORDER
Although it says that the onsite judge order may not match the numbers, I think these do. The first guy who came to our tent gave me the worst vibe and he was the least personable one of the bunch so it only makes sense that he was in fact, J1 who gave us "low" scores. Pam, was the second judge at the tent and she gave me the best vibe of all. She told me that the ribs were tender (a first from an onsite judge), delicious and were it not for the fact that she had had gastric bipass surgery (yep, that's right stomach stapled and judging a contest celebrating excessive eating) and could physically only eat 4 ounces between 3 tents, she'd have devoured the whole rack. As a side note, she's personal friends with Myron Mixon, so if she loves your ribs, then you have to be happy. Sal, from Chicago was the third judge and he made a point to come back to the tent and tell me that our ribs were the best he'd had all week so it only makes sense that he gave us the overall 10.
So what do all these numbers mean? Well, I for one think that we are right on with our timing and our methods. One area that can be improved is obviously the blind box, but more specifically, the selection of ribs to be sent in. I know that when we finished judging and I started serving up the extra racks to the team, I came across one or two racks that were perfect and I imediately said, "these were blind box ribs." I did the same thing when I pulled out Pam and Sal's racks and based on their scores, it's clear that I was right. My plan in the future is to test each rack before taking them off the smoker that way I can more accurately rank them in order of tenderness. By putting them all on the prep table and trying to figure out what was the best rack was confusing and I'm fairly certain that I didn't rank them properly. I'm also going to stick to 4 bunches of 3 bones each so that our samples are semetrical, and it takes out any chance of a judge grabbing the one bad set in the box. I figure it's best treduce the "moving parts" anywhere I can.
As with my last post, I hope I'll remember to read this next year and remind myself of what worked and what didn't. I'm open to suggestions so y'all feel free to post comments below.
All Pig, Swig, Swine and Viva la Coola!
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