I judged a KCBS contest this past Saturday and we had a sauce category before the main entries came in. At my table, we judged only two sauces. One of them was either regular Blues Hog/Tennessee Red mix clone or was just a mixture of those two sauces. When judging was over and we talked amongst ourselves about the scoring, one person at the table bluntly said: "That first entry was just Blues Hog and I scored them horribly for it."
I was taken aback. I mean, it's pretty easy to call out Blues Hog because of its distinctive flavor, but I took issue with his point of view. For all we knew, the cook DID just make a clone. We didn't see him pour the sauces from a bottle. We really don't know what we were given and it's my opinion that you judge the sauce based on what's in front of you, not what you think went on back at the cook site. That means you judge it based on its own merits.
I am curious to hear what other judges think about this.
I was taken aback. I mean, it's pretty easy to call out Blues Hog because of its distinctive flavor, but I took issue with his point of view. For all we knew, the cook DID just make a clone. We didn't see him pour the sauces from a bottle. We really don't know what we were given and it's my opinion that you judge the sauce based on what's in front of you, not what you think went on back at the cook site. That means you judge it based on its own merits.
I am curious to hear what other judges think about this.