From synchro!judge-request at uu6.psi.com Fri May 6 07:28:00 1994 Received: from uu6.psi.com by goodman.itn.med.umich.edu with SMTP id AA09577 (5.65b/IDA-1.4.3 for spencer at hendrix.itn.med.umich.edu); Fri, 6 May 94 07:27:50 -0400 Received: from synchro.UUCP by uu6.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINet) via UUCP; id AA11799 for ; Fri, 6 May 94 06:48:08 -0400 Received: by synchro.com (smail2.5) id AA18001; 6 May 94 05:21:06 EDT (Fri) Reply-To: judge at synchro.com (JudgeNet) Errors-To: judge-error at synchro.com Precedence: bulk Message-Id: <9405060521.AA18001 at synchro.com> From: judge-request at synchro.com (JudgeNet Administrator) To: judge-recipients at synchro.com (JudgeNet Recipients) Subject: JudgeNet Digest #753 (May 06, 1994) Date: 6 May 94 05:21:06 EDT (Fri) JudgeNet Digest #753 Fri 06 May 1994 THE BEER JUDGE DIGEST Chuck Cox , publisher 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 Published by SynchroSystems and the Riverside Garage & Brewery Contents: Re: Cabbage in wheat beers (Jay Hersh) Virtual Smiles ("Rad Equipment") Virtual Smiles Time:7:54 AM Date:5/5/94 Legal entries / In style or Toxic / BJCP stuff ("John R. Calen") ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 05 May 1994 11:18:00 EDT From: Jay Hersh Subject: Re: Cabbage in wheat beers more likely this was DMS due to the grain chosen, the mashing method, and insufficient boiling. DMS has a characteristic flavor most often described as cooked corn or cooked cabbage. JaH ------------------------------ Date: 5 May 1994 08:05:58 -0800 From: "Rad Equipment" Subject: Virtual Smiles Subject: Virtual Smiles Time:7:54 AM Date:5/5/94 OK, for the benefit of Roger (and any other of our humor impaired readers), here are the smiley faces I guess I should have strategicly placed in my post about virtual beer and brewing. (;-) (;-) (;-) (;-) (;-) (;-) (;-) (;-) (;-) (;-) (;-) Lighten up! RW... Russ Wigglesworth (INTERNET: Rad_Equipment at radmac1.ucsf.edu - CI$: 72300,61) UCSF Dept. of Radiology, San Francisco, CA (415) 476-3668 / Home (707) 769-0425 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 May 94 16:59:42 EDT From: "John R. Calen" Subject: Legal entries / In style or Toxic / BJCP stuff There's been some interesting threads here over the past few posts. I'd like to chime in, but I'll lead with something new to chew on... One of my last batches was a porter which was an all-grain experiment for me. (I split the mash between three kettles for starts. No, I won't be doing *THAT* again!) I hopped the beer as called for in the recipe, but found out later that I'd only gotten three-quarters of the extraction I'd expected. Yes, the resulting brew is way too bitter and hoppy. Other than the poor balance though, it's clean. "Well," I wondered, "I don't want to dump this. Maybe I can mix it with a sweet malty beer and see how that tastes..." On hand was a Watney's Cream Stout, so I used it. And the beer they made wasn't too bad. All of this leads to a question, if you haven't already seen it coming; Is it legal to use a commercial beer as an ingredient in a homebrew entered in competition? Personally, I think it's not ethical, but legal unless it's specifically forbidden in the rules for a given competition. There is precedent for using commercial products in homebrew, such as curacao or Kahlua. Heck, you can't get much more commercial than malt extract, or a complete beer "kit". - ------------------>8 As far as the "fidelity-to-style vs. flaw vs. score" thread, I agree that with a perfect brew that is totally mis-entered (i.e. porter in a pilsner category) all I can do as a judge is give it a 24 and praise it as much as possible in text. Sometimes the lines aren't so clear, many categories have overlapping definitions, thus a beer can be awarded more than 24 points and be a mis-entry, though I'd have a definite tie-breaker to work with. I'd have to flip a coin if I had a slightly flawed, properly entered brew against a perfect, mis-entered beer that can still score high when awarding first place. Is the collective wisdom that the properly entered beer should win? - -------------------------->8 As to the notion of never awarding a lower score than a 19, that was certainly stressed in the AHA first round in Kingston, NY. One of the judges in attendance did give the calibration beer a 15, he was chastised privately, and the judges were told a second time not to score any beer lower than a 19. - ---------------------->8 That brings up an item. Should we score from the bottom up, or the top down? Is a beer perfect unless we can justify why it isn't, or is it water until we justify it's beer? (Hmmm.... it's liquid... stays in the glass... that's 19 points already!) - ---------------------->8 Finally, at the apres judging soiree in Kingston, I had the chance to chat with Pat Baker about the whole score-sheet thing I'd asked about here a while ago. His take is that we are *NOT* teachers. (Emphasis is *MINE*.) (This stunned one of my friends who was part of the chat. He'd felt it was a primary role we had, if not in an explicit sense, at least to provide pointers. Very useful to the new brewer.) Pat mentioned a few things that sound interesting about the future of the BJCP. One of them was that he'd like to start a quarterly newsletter. In it he'd have the chance to get deep into a given subject, and yes, he does plan to include examples of appropriately filled-in score sheets. (Conversely, he may include inappropriate examples as well. Steve Black, you listening? (BTW- I never felt flamed, just haven't had much to add until today. Thanks for your candor.)) Keep the discussions going, I learn quite a bit right here. Regards, John Calen ------------------------------ End of JudgeNet Digest ************************