Experience Point Award Schedule

• Judges earn a minimum of 1.0 Judge Point per competition.
• Judges earn a maximum of 1.5 Judge Points per day.

BOS Judge Points are a separate category of points, and are not subject to these limitations. The total number of experience points (including Judge Points) a judge may earn in a competition is limited by the Organizer Points, and is shown in Table 1. Judge Points are a type of judging experience points.

BOS Judges are eligible to receive 0.5 Best-of-Show (BOS) Judge Points if they judge in any BOS panel in a competition. There is an expectation that judging the multiple styles in a Best of Show panel requires additional expertise and is more difficult that judging and selecting the best of a single style. Determining if one beer (or mead or cider) is a better example of its style than another beer (mead or cider) is of its style is more challenging. Therefore, it is expected that the entries in a BOS panel are different styles from the multiple first round ribbon categories. As a reminder, BOS points are not to be awarded for mini-BOS panels to determine the winners in a category, even if that category encompasses multiple styles.

BOS Judge Points are a type of judging experience points separate from Judge Points. The BOS Judge Points are a bonus (i.e., an additional or extra reward) in addition to any other judging and non-judging experience points earned in the competition and may only be awarded to a single judge once per competition. BOS Judge Points may only be awarded if a competition has at least 30 entries in at least five beer and/or three mead/cider different categories. The number of judges eligible to receive the BOS Judge Point bonus is correlated to the number of entries/styles in each BOS panel as follows:

• 5-14 entries, including beer = 3 BOS Judges
• 3-14 meads and/or ciders (only) = 3 BOS Judges
• 15 or more entries of any type or combination = 5 BOS Judges

This limitation applies to each individual BOS panel. Competitions may seat separate homebrew, commercial and mead and/or cider BOS panels, if desired. However, the BJCP Competition Directorate wants to remind judges and organizers that judging Best of Show panels is to be done to the style guideline criteria for the competition where we judge to find the beer/mead/cider that best fits its declared style including potential technical and style faults. The BJCP has been made aware that some competitions have awarded Best of Show judging points for judging of a parallel BOS for beers/meads/ciders to be brewed by a pro-brewer. The judging itself is not a problem. However, the judging criteria often involves which beer/mead/cider might be most commercially successful, not picked “because we already make that style,”  “we can’t pick that because we don’t want wild yeasts/bacteria in the brewery,”  or similar non-style/non-fault related criteria.  These are out of scope for BJCP sanctioned competitions where the Best of Show criteria is based on which beer/mead/cider is closest to its style definition and has the least technical and style faults. Competitions are free to have these “brewer’s choice” judging panels but cannot award BOS points for the judging. As a reminder, competitions can have up to 5 BOS panels. These may include beer, mead or cider.

A Best-Of-Show judge receives the BOS Judge Point bonus if a judge judges in at least one other session in the competition. If a judge only judges in a BOS panel, that judge earns 1.0 BOS Judge Points and no Judge Points.

As a reminder, here’s the Position statement on judging wine:

While mead (honey wine) and cider (apple wine) are acceptable to be judged by BJCP judges and to receive points for doing so, other wines are not. We will not deter competitions from including wine or BJCP judges from judging wine; however, when counting the sessions in which BJCP judges judge to assess the number of points they receive, wine judging should NOT be included. BJCP judges will not be allowed to acquire judging points for judging anything other than beer, cider and mead.  For example, if a judge were to judge a beer flight on Friday evening, cider and mead flights on Saturday AM and cabernet wine Saturday PM, the judge would receive 1.0 point for judging two sessions.    Wine should not be included in beer, cider or mead BOS judging when considering the number of entries to determine if there will be BOS points awarded and how many judges can receive BOS points. In other words, include wine judging in a BJCP sanctioned competition, for the convenience of hosting wine judging in the same competition, and if they wish BJCP judges can participate in wine judging, however, the BJCP will not award any points for wine judging, only for beer, mead and cider.  The number of wine entries should not be included in the organizer report or used to compute point structure for organizer or staff or stewards or the number of Best of Show judges.