Confused how to improve pork scores

I was trying to think of a eye catching title but thought it would be better to get straight to the point.

Last weekend I entered my first comp and my main goal was to learn and have fun. I did have fun, met some great people like fellow forum member Brad W. who beat me in overall(congrats on a great performance Brad) and for the most part I learned alot.

I did get a couple of judges comments on my ribs such as "wonderful Glaze"(Blues Hog thinned with pineapple juice) but I also got a rib comment of "too salty" which is amusing because my rib rub contained zero salt. Overall I still did OK on ribs so I am satisfied.

But where I am having a hard time learning what I did right or wrong so I can improve is on my pork. We already know we deserved our appearance scores 7s and 6s as time almost got away from us. Tenderness is a little confusing as to how to improve 7,9,6,9,6,7 so two 9s and two 6s ??? But....where I am really lost as to how to improve is my taste scores 8,9,6,9,9,5 so three 9s an 8 and then two lower scores???

Being a certified judge I know personal taste comes into play but for that big a difference Those 4 high score makes me feel I did something right but then those 2 low scores concern me. So any advise would be greatly appreciated because I would like to do better.

We both did good for our first contest. It was fun, learned a lot and met some fun people like Fred.

I think the rib judging was all over the place. I did not have the same scoring differences in the other three categories. My appearance scores were close but my taste scores ranged 3-9 and tenderness 5-9. Remarks ranged from "too spicy" to "I loved the spiciness", same range remarks for the tenderness.

My views on barbecuing scoring are going to be the same as with homebrewing contest. I'm not going to really change anything until I get through three contest first. Then if I start seeing the same poor scores and remarks showing up consistently, then I'll make changes and wait another couple contest before making changes again. Lakefest only had 75% KCBS judges, which means there was a good chance we could have gotten a table with 2 non-KCBS judges with the ribs. I know what mistakes I made and will work on correcting those but also know what a lot of people say about my cooking which I know is good. One contest isn't going to change what I'm doing.

Fred, On the whole your scores are all over the place. But getting 9s is very good. If it were me, I would evaluate your turn ins as a judge, that you are. If you are happy with the product stick with it. If there are areas for improvement try to make it. Overall with the variability of your scores what else can you do. How did you place overall?

Mark

I'm with you Fred, I can never understand wide discrepancies in scores, especially with appearance. Just this weekend our chicken appearance scored: 8 9 9 9 9 6. I don't think you can read much into it. Brad has some good advice when he says to try a couple of comps before you start to change things up. Judges that aren't experienced might be reluctant to score high and fall back on the 6 as a starting point.

I can say with great confidence, that I have no idea how to actually improve your pork scores. After 9 contests over 5 years, we've gotten 4 chicken calls, 3 brisket calls, 2 rib calls and ZERO pork calls.

We've tried just about every thing and the best we've managed a 156.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by mk evenson:
Fred, On the whole your scores are all over the place. But getting 9s is very good. If it were me, I would evaluate your turn ins as a judge, that you are. If you are happy with the product stick with it. If there are areas for improvement try to make it. Overall with the variability of your scores what else can you do. How did you place overall?

Mark </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hey Mark I didnt do to bad being my first Overall I finished 10th out of 17 but did beat a couple of more "experienced" teams. Ribs were 8th, Chicken 9th, Brisket 11th(which absolutely stuns me because I thought it was horrible) and 16th in pork. So I didnt finish DAL in anything and I know where I can improve ALMOST everything.

I have another contest entered at the end of August up here and it is only ribs,chicken, and pork. My daughter is supposed to pop at that same time period so my wife will be there because Grandma has to be there. So I will be doing this contest by myself and plan on trying to keep it simple and just learn more.

Not sure what your pork entry consists of, but at our last comp we turned in "chunks" of pork and all of the chunks had a healthy amount of bark on them. We placed 3rd out of 41, so something we did worked.

Of course, it may have been my secret Wyocena Yacht Club pork rub recipe!