A festival the size of Memphis in May wouldn’t be possible without volunteers. Hundreds of them give their time during the month to make sure teams, guests, sponsors, vendors, media and staff can enjoy a good event. Hats off to them.

But there’s another group of folks who turn over three days each May and they pay for the privilege to do so. We couldn’t have competition barbecue if we didn’t have judges, and in a non-pandemic year, there are about 400 people who are happy to pay $75, give or take, to ensure that the show goes on.

I’m a certified judge and signed up for the whole shebang this year. When I received my wristband and schedule in the mail, I saw that the whole shebang could take a big chunk of my Thursday, Friday and Saturday hours, so I had to back out.

As I say to someone nearly every day: Do I look like I’m made of time?

But there are honorary judges every year, folks who go through the process with the real-deal judges, and I asked to do that. The difference is that my score card wasn’t actually tallied, and that I could judge one contest and split instead of hanging around in the judges’ tent all day, doing one after another.

Tip your hat once again, this time to these guys. It’s all fun and games until you’re on your sixth rack of ribs and you’re already stuffed with whole hog and shoulder, when you’re way past stretchy-pants full and wondering if you’re going to be sick. (It happens; of course it does.)

Myron Mixon ties Memphis in May record with fifth championship

But it’s easy to see the allure. There’s a camaraderie among the judges, who hang out together at tables on the east side of the tent while they’re waiting to be called to the tables facing the river for active judging. The whole thing is warm and fuzzy, boozy and buzzy (though you don’t drink before you judge; it’s in the rules).

To be a judge, you have to be certified first, or as they say at big-b Barbecue, you “have to be certifiable.” Certification comes by going to judging school, a one-day class usually held in November at one hotel or another Downtown and taught by Memphis in May volunteers Mary and Frank Horner. You start by taking a test to see what you know about how barbecue is supposed to taste and to be judged, then you take it again at the end of the day.

I went a few years ago, figuring I’d ace it the first round. But made a 78, which means I missed 11 of the 50 questions. Some of them were written to be a little tricky, but whatever — I still didn’t know everything I thought I did. I ended up with a 100 at the end of the day and a desire to take my new skills to the judging tent.

This year, I learned even more, and this is the most interesting part of it to me: Everyone has their own way of judging, even at Barbecue, where judging is as serious as it is fun. This is not Italian Fest! (Kidding! Just kidding! Please ask me to judge when you return in 2022.)

When the judges are seated, containers of the food are placed on the table. It could be beef, chicken, hot wings, turkey, seafood, sauces, something wild in exotic (as in rattlesnake wild) or the big three — ribs, shoulder and whole hog. The score sheet has room for six samples and in each contest I judged, we had the max at our table.

I judged seafood, turkey and ribs. The sheet was the same for each; we judged from 8 to 10 on appearance, tenderness, and flavor, and gave an overall score carried two decimal points.

Does 8 to 10 sound a little strange, as in what happened to 1 through 7? It did to me when I first learned it some years ago, but it’s not: It’s actually a 200-point scale, not a 3-point one, as you can judge from 8.00, 8.01 and so on, up to 10.00. You have to offer a reason for scoring anything less than 9.00. The expectation is that the food you’re judging is good.

“You start out thinking everything is a 10, right? Then you work from there,” said Seth Agranov, who judges and also competes in various food contests, and who is definitely better qualified to judge competition than I am; this is very different from restaurant reviewing.

First of all, you are only judging against the other food on your table. You pick the best, give it a 10.00, and rate the others against it. In blind judging, which is what I did, there’s no taking into account the standards used for restaurant reviews — no consideration of service, atmosphere, creativity, value and so on. It’s food vs. food. Wing against wing. Shoulder to shoulder.

Teams of Barbecue: Big Bob Gibson’s

You stand, look closely and make your assessment on appearance with the food is still in the box, then serve yourself, putting the samples on a placemat with the numbers already marked.

Then you taste.

You don’t discuss anything with your fellow judges until you’re done, when it’s fun to talk about it. The 8, 9 and 10 have little boxes around them, and most people judge using the tick method:

Say you taste a rib and think it’s a 9, but a high 9. You put a small tick in the upper left corner of the box — consider that a 9.99 — and work clockwise around the box. The bottom left is roughly 9.66, bottom right 9.33, and upper right 9.00.

Or however you want to do it. You might start your ticks some other place or do it a different way. I put dashes in the box, and the higher the dash, the higher the decimal point. It doesn’t matter, as long as it works for you. It’s how you keep track as you work your way through the samples in front of you.

What matters is the overall score you give each sample.

Teams of Barbecue: Mexican BBQ Team

David Zaricor has been judging since 1997 and has been sanctioned to judge in four different barbecue networks over the years. He sat at my table and we picked the same ribs as our favorite.

“How I start is I give everybody a 10 in appearance,” he said. “I guess there could be a reason not to, something crazy, but so far, that hasn’t happened.

“Then I stay with one rib until I’m done. I give a tick for what it tastes like and how tender it is, and it’s important to me that it all works together. Does everything about it, the meat, the sauce, the smoke, does it complement each other? Does anything overwhelm the meat?”

Teams of Barbecue: Hog Wild-Competition Team

He goes back through for a second taste, makes sure his 10.00 is the right one, and gives the second one a 9.99, working down from there.

“I find that your first impression usually serves you well,” he said, and that’s part of the pre-judging speech before each contest: Don’t overthink it.

Me, I overthink it. I smell everything. I pull apart the ribs to see how they tear, I pull the insides out of an egg roll to look at everything in it, tease out spices to judge the creativity (not even a category in anything I judged and no worries; I slapped my own hand), I go back and taste everything three or four times. Then after all that, I judged too harshly, which didn’t matter this time because my scores weren’t used.

Teams of Barbecue: I Only Smoke When I Drink

But it would matter if I were to do it for real. There’s money even in the ancillary contests. The first-place winner in hot wings takes home $2,500 and it goes down a little from there for sauce and the other categories. Obviously it’s important to the folks who have invested a huge amount of time and money to compete in ribs, shoulder and whole hog. Further, people aren’t even doing this for the money. They’re doing it for the love of it and they take pride in it. When you sit in judgment of their food, you need to put your heart in it, too.

I watch people running through the park, trying to get their food to the tent at the last possible moment so it’s fresh for the judges. I know how much this means to them, and I have too many real-job duties at Memphis in May to give judging the attention it deserves. I decided that real judging there is not for me, not as long as I’m writing about the contest.

Also, I’ve never been on a team, and many of the judges have. Zaricor was on one for years; he said he got too old to work that hard. Agranov competes in all kinds of food contests, was the founder of a couple of local festivals including Best Memphis Burger Fest, and understands the ins and outs.

And Roger Tisdale, also at my table for ribs judging, cooked on a team for about 10 years. He’s been around Barbecue (big-B) a long time.

“I was in the first judges’ school they ever had,” he said. “It was at some hotel down on Brooks Road.”

His sons are barbecue judges; it’s a family tradition, something they share.

“I can tell you this as a judge this year, it’s just good to be back,” he said.

Teams of Barbecue: Moe Cason Barbecue

But judges are needed every year, and chances are you’re not otherwise working at Memphis in May. So maybe this is the thing for you, and all these guys started somewhere. If you want to judge, you’ll have to prepare for it because remember, you have to be certified. I’ll let you know when enrollment for the next class begins.

I don’t know when it is yet but I know this: It’ll be at some hotel Downtown.