MCI Results.

I'm curious how many of you sent in entries to the Mazer Cup International this year? Please post your results. If you were there please comment.

When you get your score sheets. Tell us if you feel the judges comments seemed to make sense.

Folks. This is how you make better mead. Sending in your meads, and getting feedback from judges. And then possibly making adjustments to make it better.

I won 2 first place awards. I was actually a bit disappointed. I thought I would win more. I had seven entries that were pushed up into the Mini Best of Show. And only two actually medaled.

We got our score sheets back after the award ceremony this year. After seeing my scores, and talking to others. I didn't feel so bad. This years competition was so stiff, that the scores we had that didn't even medal probably could win Best of Show anywhere else in the world. Many scores of 44, 45, 46 out of 50 were left on the table with nothing to show for it.

darigoni said:

Congrats Ryan! I guess what you've been telling us isn't BS!

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I was in second place for Mead Maker of the Year, prior to MCI. I will figure where I stand currently this evening. Incidently, I occasionally Tele on a newbie and work with them. One fellow won't 2 awards with 3 month old meads he made under my tutelage. He failed on 2 before we met. His next 2 were medal winners using my protocol.
On another note. I spent an hour on the phone with a labcoat at Scott's Lab. She said what we promote around here is the best we can do with the current understanding.

dingurth said:

Congrats Squatchy and thanks for putting it in perspective!
I submitted 2 myself. Do you know how score sheets are returned for people who weren't at the comp? Email, regular mail, posted on the user profile of the mazercup site?

I thought it was so cool to see people like yourself who frequent the forum and facebook pages all at the top of the medal charts. I was also really surprised just how many of the commerical mead winners I had already tried! Great showing all around.

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I am not sure as I have always been there in person and get our scores in person

So I added up the top competitors scores in the Mead Maker of the Year points. I'm surprised to say I am currently still in second place.

Thanks for the kind words everyone.
I didn't bring up The Domras Cup scores because I didn't recognise anyone from around here in the medal awards from that comp. I was hoping more from here were going to crawl out of the cracks that played in the Mazer Cup

I need to correct something here. I missed a part of the medal count when figuring the Mead Maker of the Year. I am currently in third place by 6 points. Not in second like I had mistakenly reported earlier.

dingurth said:

I was waiting til I got my scoresheets back to comment on this. Turns out USPS got confused and sent them back to the Mazer Cup headquarters.

My stout braggot got a 38. The judges comments fell in line pretty well with what my own thoughts were. It looks like most of my flaws were with flavor combinations. It was an experiment after all.

My spiced cyser got a 37. One judge didn't write any comments which was a bit disheartening.
The other was saying very nice things, but indicated that I didn't specify which spices I used so he docked me because of that. I definitely did mention my spices on my entry sheet, so it looks like a stewarding mishap that they only put my fruits down and not the spices. That's a bit of a bummer too.

Overall, very cool experience though. And it was nice to learn that my biggest places for improvement are minor balance tweaks and flavor strengths/choices. I was feeling confident in my fermentation protocols, but this helped to confirm it.

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Hi Bud.

So they used a new software program this year. And your entries weren't the only ones that didn't move forward some of the declarations.

So in my estimation, it is very easy today to learn how to make good science in mead making. And to be clear. It's always the final tweaks that make or break a mead. And this is also much harder to teach over the internet. I wish I could have you all over to my house and we could play with stuff to help illustrate how to create balance in mead. The difference between a 38 and a 45 is doing exactly that. (maybe that's just a couple points far-fetched. It would depend on why it's a 38.) But. With just a couple tweaks within 5 minutes, I can make most meads 3-4 points better. Usually, an acid add helps most things. As well as some type of oak addition as well. This I can do with oak tea I have on hand all the time. I'm fortunate in as much as I get to take home a good bit of meads from the competitions I judge at once everything is over. This gives me probably over 100 meads a year I can play with to learn how to make them better with adjuncts. Everything I buy and after I give people feedback on the meads they send my way. I play with to see how little they need to be adjusted to bring them into a much better result. On of the judges took all of the medals winners in a mead only competition. And just added acid to them and the panel said they were able to make almost everything better with just a drop or two of the correct acid adjustment. Sometimes what you think would be the right acid ends up being something different. I usually add the same type of acid found naturally in the mead ingredients. But once in a while, a different acid ends up being the better add.

These are just adjuncts. Mind you. And if somehow we could move forward or push back some of the players in any given mead we could balance those it would probably seem pretty easy to make a better mead after just doing this a few days in a row.

Those are pretty good scores coming from the Mazer Cup. They might win at other competitions. I see low to mid 40's come home empty-handed at MCI every year I have entered. I think you could raise your points by 2 with just what I mentioned above. And then if you were to remake some of the same meads with added tweaks from the comments you thought were correct. You could push them into the low 40's. I have learned that in MCI. I look to see how many I made that got pushed into the medal rounds. Even if they don't medal. Just that they got that far is a solid confirmation that they are great meads. I only took home two golds. But I had seven meads that were in contention for a medal. That might say more than what the two medals would have told me if I didn't know how many were pushed forward in the mini Bost of Show (mini bos)

The three that didn't push were as such that I knew that they would either do well or fail depending on what judges were picked. I don't think much if any points should be deducted based on a silent declaration. If you said you had bacon in the mead, and there was no bacon. Maybe 1 point deduction for that. But no more.