From synchro!judge-request at uu6.psi.com Fri Mar 11 06:28:14 1994 Received: from uu6.psi.com by goodman.itn.med.umich.edu with SMTP id AA03320 (5.65b/IDA-1.4.3 for spencer at hendrix.itn.med.umich.edu); Fri, 11 Mar 94 06:28:07 -0500 Received: from synchro.UUCP by uu6.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINet) via UUCP; id AA22518 for ; Fri, 11 Mar 94 06:03:36 -0500 Received: by synchro.com (smail2.5) id AA05553; 11 Mar 94 05:11:41 EST (Fri) Reply-To: judge at synchro.com (JudgeNet) Errors-To: judge-error at synchro.com Precedence: bulk Message-Id: <9403110511.AA05553 at synchro.com> From: judge-request at synchro.com (JudgeNet Administrator) To: judge-recipients at synchro.com (JudgeNet Recipients) Subject: JudgeNet Digest #709 (Mar 11, 1994) Date: 11 Mar 94 05:11:41 EST (Fri) JudgeNet Digest #709 Fri 11 Mar 1994 THE BEER JUDGE DIGEST Chuck Cox , digest administrator Michael Hall , archive administrator digest submissions to judge at synchro.com administrative requests to judge-request at synchro.com send rank updates to the administrative address messages sent to the wrong address will be ignored FTP archive information in /pub/judge/README on cygnus.ta52.lanl.gov Sponsored by SynchroSystems and the Riverside Garage & Brewery Contents: HWBTA judging (bickham) Judging Proceedures (Carlo Fusco) Style-training sessions (korz) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 09:16:30 -0500 (EST) From: bickham at msc.cornell.edu Subject: HWBTA judging Now that's the HWBTA Nationals are over and I'm partially recovered from having all of my wisdom teeth removed, I'd like to congratulate Rick Garvin on pairing the right judges with the right judges. All of the panels I saw were headed by either a National judge, Master judge, or a brewer with a good reputatation in that category, e.g. Phil Seitz on the Belgians and Jim Busch on wheats beers. The other judges seemed to also be pretty well on top of things, so the entrants should be be confident that their beers were competently judged. And yes, I finally got the chance to judge Altbiers. Unfortunately nothing stood out and an excellent (but slightly cloudy) Koelsch took the honors and two steam beers nudged out an alt for second and third place. Afterwards, Tim Artz brought over some of his latest alt, and I was impressed. It had the perfect amount of roasted character in the nose, enough body, and a bitter an astringent finish that wasn't overly harsh or phenolic. It was only kegged two weeks ago, so it will only improve with age. It should be interesting to see how it does in the AHA Nationals. Cheers, Scott - -- ======================================================================== Scott Bickham bickham at msc.cornell.edu ========================================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 13:45:00 -0500 From: carlo.fusco at canrem.com (Carlo Fusco) Subject: Judging Proceedures Hello Judges, As a non judge, I have a question about judging proceedures. When a beer is entered in a contest and has the various items attached to the bottles, what happens to it before it gets to the judges table? I ask this question because I wanted to know if the judge has the brewers name, beer name, and/or recipe sheet when they are judging the beer. Or, is the judge completely blind except for knowing what catagory the beer is in? Thanks Carlo - --- * Freddie 1.2.5 * email: carlo.fusco at canrem.com Sharon,Ontario,Canada ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 94 12:04 CST From: korz at iepubj.att.com Subject: Style-training sessions Steve writes (quoting Karen): >>I think the discussions about having a specific beer style reviewed in depth >>during the AHA National Homebrew Conference is a great idea... >Karen, I think that this is a good idea and hope that the AHA will pursue >something along these lines. AS for alts, however, I think that a reality >check is in order here. In order for the AHA to pull this off and have it do >the judges any good, I believe that there are two requirements: > >1) there must be a fairly good variety of the style available in the US, at >least 3 or 4 brands, preferably more >2) a person acknowleged to be well-versed in the style needs to help lead the >discussion > >For alts, I don't believe that we really have either. Don't get me wrong, it'd >be _great_ if the AHA could get some kegs of Dusseldorf alt flown over! (and >the Zum Urige brewmaster to give a talk, of course :-). But unless you are >confident that you can do this you should aim your sights a bit lower, at least >for the first one. Getting together and drinking St. Stan's, DAB Dark, and >Grolsch Amber while several of us wave our hands isn't going to help introduce >anybody to the style. If we were to do this informally, as I had initially suggested, then I still think it would be beneficial if we had either 1) or 2). However, if we were to do this formally, then I agree that both 1) and 2) are necessary if we want to get the maximum benefit. My initial suggestion was to have a panel of "experts" to lead the tasting -- as we all know, there are subtleties in beer that are often missed when a single person does the tasting/judging/talking. Judging is truly an example of "two heads are better than one." >Something like Eric Warner leading a tasting /discussion on Bavarian Weizens, >for example, would have been of great interest in Denver. I hear that >Baltimore is rumored to be the site of the '95 conference. Theo DeGroen and >Pils or Dopplebocks perhaps? > >I think that it is OK if a style is broadly available in the US; the >discussion >can still be educational. Even better if the style is available but not >widely. A session on tripels and dubbels comes to mind - though I'm not >sure who would lead _that_ discussion. If the style that was being presented was commonly available (unless there were several unattainable beers included or the speaker was an esteemed brewer), for instance Doppelbocks, then I would probably pass on the session. Using Doppelbocks as an example, since Salvator, Optimator and Celebrator are available virtually nationwide, I think that there wouldn't be as much interest in the session as opposed to: Pierre Celis, Michael Jackson and someone else leading a tasting of 10 witbiers. or Frank Boon, JP Van Roy and someone else leading a tasting of 10 lambieks (heck, I'd pay $50 for this!). Al. ------------------------------ End of JudgeNet Digest ************************