{"id":3894,"date":"2024-07-11T03:01:13","date_gmt":"2024-07-11T03:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/inside-the-acs-judging-competition-2024\/"},"modified":"2024-07-11T03:01:13","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T03:01:13","slug":"inside-the-acs-judging-competition-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/inside-the-acs-judging-competition-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the ACS Judging & Competition (2024)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Editor’s note: Cheesemonger and author Gordon Edgar recently shared his experience as the Good Food Award’s <\/em>vegan cheese informant<\/em><\/a>. Previously he shared a <\/em>review of Ending the War on Artisan Cheese<\/em><\/a>. Now he’s back with the scoop on what it’s like to judge cheese for the American Cheese Society.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Judges receiving instructions photo credit Gordon Edgar<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The judging room isn\u2019t loud, but it isn\u2019t hushed.\u00a0 It\u2019s a big room inside the University of Minnesota Huntington Bank Stadium (University of Minnesota) and there is a lot of room between the tables. Judges, stewards, and committee members of the American Cheese Society\u2019s Judging and Competition Committee<\/a> are generally trying to keep their voices low enough so as not to disturb others, but you hear the words and phrases of cheese celebration and disappointment as the judges fill out their scorecards: \u201cDiacetyl,\u201d \u201cSlight unclean,\u201d \u201cRustic appearance,\u201d \u201cWhey taint.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u00a0By the Numbers <\/h2>\n
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Tools for judging photo credit Gordon Edgar<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was in Minneapolis for the 2024 American Cheese Society Judging and Competition. 1596 cheeses and other dairy products made from the U.S., Canada, and the Americas were there as well. 133 separate categories were judged by eighteen teams of judges over two days before a Best of Show winner was determined by judges tasting the category winners. That\u2019s a lot of cheese over the course of two days! I will spare descriptive details, but please note that a wine spit bucket may be disgusting, but a cheese spit bucket is worse.<\/p>\n

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Judges coats at ACS Judging photo credit Gordon Edgar<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Before heading to Minnesota in June, I hadn\u2019t judged the competition for a while. After judging ACS ten times or so, I joined the committee to help put the event on. The behind the scenes work at any event like this is hard to describe and mostly unseen, but it takes a lot of organization and a bunch of people to receive, temp, categorize and anonymize that many foods in a couple of days. For personal reasons, I took a leave from the committee in 2022 but jumped at the chance to judge again when asked.<\/p>\n

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The Value of Competitions <\/h2>\n
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Gordon Edgar and Marianne Smukowski photo credit American Cheese Society and Valerie Tobias of Dairy Connections<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a cheesemonger, what I love about the American Cheese Society Judging and Competition is having two days of cheese in its purest form.\u00a0 The competition is anonymous so there are no sales pitches, no branding, no marketing and no personal past history. It\u2019s just you, your partner, the dairy product and your senses. Not only is it a break from the day-to-day of cheese selling, the judging and competition is a chance to give honest feedback to producers that they can use to improve their products.\u00a0 That was the initial concept of this competition back in the days when the entries were in the double digits and 40 years later it is still the main point of emphasis.\u00a0 Most entries won\u2019t win awards, but everyone will get a professional analysis of their cheese.<\/p>\n

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Styles of Judging\u00a0<\/h2>\n

There are different types of cheese competitions, each with their own benefits to consumers and producers.\u00a0 The most popular is the 4H method where judges walk around a room to different entries, taste the cheese and judge it as \u201cgold\u201d \u201csilver\u201d or \u201cbronze\u201d.\u00a0 If the judges don\u2019t agree, they can discuss before deciding on a final award. If all vote for \u201cgold\u201d it becomes a \u201csuper gold\u201d.\u00a0 There are no score sheets for this style judging and is easier to manage for things like State and County fairs.<\/p>\n

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Judging photo credit American Cheese Society and Valerie Tobias of Dairy Connections<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Most of the long-term professional judging have only technical judges: dairy scientists and professional graders who evaluate the cheeses.\u00a0 They start at a perfect score of 100 and deduct points for flaws. Technically amazing cheeses win these events, but the Best of Show may not be super interesting to the consumer. A perfect cheese may be a thing of beauty in the professional\u2019s hands and mouth, but not necessarily get anyone excited on a grazing board.<\/p>\n

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Tina McGarry Mooney and David Lockwood ACS Judging 2024 photo credit Gordon Edgar<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The ACS competition tries to meld the best practices of the technical competition while encouraging stronger, more unique flavors. A technical judge (working down from 50) is paired with an aesthetic judge.\u00a0 Aesthetic judges generally work are experienced non-technical cheese professionals: mongers, distributors, retailers. These are folks, myself included,\u00a0 who have an eye towards novel appearance, unusual styles, and interesting, sometimes unexpected, flavor so — while the technical keeps the competition grounded –the aesthetic awards points (up to 50) for flavors and attributes they like.\u00a0 A rind could lose a point from the technical judge for an uneven appearance but be awarded a point for a \u201crustic\u201d appearance that makes it stand out in a cheese case.<\/p>\n

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Theoretically this rewards people trying hard to make new interesting cheese with big flavors.\u00a0 These cheeses were often unrecognized in other competitions and the goal of the American Cheese Society was to promote artisan cheesemaking.\u00a0 As everyone reading this probably knows, real artisan cheese making needs to be appreciated not only for great and expected flavors and textures, but also for those beautiful imperfections and unexpected happenings that \u2013 years later \u2013 become standards that others try to achieve.<\/p>\n

And the Results Are\u2026 <\/h2>\n

I rolled a lot of cheese and dairy around my mouth over forty-eight hours.\u00a0 For the most part it was a journey of aesthetic aging. A joy of judgement. A dairy delight! While I admit\u00a0 that the palette gets a little tired of fifteen cheeses into a flavored category, it is still such an honor knowing that you are tasting the other ten because you are trying to help all cheese get better. And \u2013 from the first time I judged until now \u2013 the difference in quality is tremendous.<\/p>\n

So, who won?\u00a0 I can\u2019t tell you because I don\u2019t know!<\/p>\n

The competition takes anonymity seriously and even the judges won\u2019t know until everyone does when they are announced at the annual American Cheese Society Conference on July 11. Put it on your calendar so you can have a new list of cheese to check out for the next twelve months.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s note: Cheesemonger and author Gordon Edgar recently shared his experience as the Good Food Award’s vegan cheese informant. Previously he shared a review of Ending the War on Artisan Cheese. Now he’s back with the scoop on what it’s like to judge cheese for the American Cheese Society. Judges receiving instructions photo credit Gordon … Okumaya devam et “Inside the ACS Judging & Competition (2024)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[395],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-milk-and-diary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}