From synchro!judge-request at uu6.psi.com Thu Feb 9 07:06:24 1995 Status: O X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil t nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["15927" "" " 9" "February" "1995" "05:12:46" "EST" "JudgeNet Administrator" "judge-owner at synchro.com" nil "332" "JudgeNet Digest #964 (Feb 09, 1995)" "^From:" nil nil "2" nil nil nil nil] nil) Received: by judgmentday.rs.itd.umich.edu (8.6.9/2.2) with X.500 id HAA15494; Thu, 9 Feb 1995 07:06:22 -0500 Received: from goodman.itn.med.umich.edu by judgmentday.rs.itd.umich.edu (8.6.9/2.2) with SMTP id HAA15489; Thu, 9 Feb 1995 07:06:20 -0500 Received: from uu6.psi.com by goodman.itn.med.umich.edu with SMTP id AA18300 (5.65b/IDA-1.4.3 for spencer at umich.edu); Thu, 9 Feb 95 07:06:15 -0500 Received: from synchro.UUCP by uu6.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINet) via UUCP; id AA28672 for ; Thu, 9 Feb 95 05:46:59 -0500 Received: by synchro.com (smail2.5) id AA08812; 9 Feb 95 05:12:46 EST (Thu) Reply-To: judge at synchro.com (JudgeNet) Errors-To: judge-error at synchro.com Precedence: bulk Message-Id: <9502090512.AA08812 at synchro.com> From: judge-owner at synchro.com (JudgeNet Administrator) To: judge-recipients at synchro.com (JudgeNet Recipients) Subject: JudgeNet Digest #964 (Feb 09, 1995) Date: 9 Feb 95 05:12:46 EST (Thu) JudgeNet Digest #964 Thu 09 Feb 1995 THE BEER JUDGE DIGEST digest submissions: judge at synchro.com administrative requests: judge-request at synchro.com send cancellations & rank updates to the administrative address messages sent to the wrong address will be ignored FTP Archives: guraldi.hgp.med.umich.edu in /pub/judge WWW Archives: http://guraldi.hgp.med.umich.edu/Beer/Judge Gopher Archives: guraldi.hgp.med.umich.edu Editor: Chuck Cox Archivist: Spencer Thomas Publishers: SynchroSystems and the Riverside Garage & Brewery Contents: BJCP REGIONS ("PATRICK N. BAKER") Beer Styles and Taxonomy (International?) (G.A.Cooper) Re: Dr. Beer guidelines (Spencer.W.Thomas) Sanctioning fees (" Bob Paolino, Research Analyst") NO SUBJECT (" Bob Paolino, Research Analyst") ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 08 Feb 95 09:45:08 EST From: "PATRICK N. BAKER" <74443.3040 at compuserve.com> Subject: BJCP REGIONS In any scenario of democratization of the BJCP, the various judging regions of the country will have to organize themselves, both to function, and to communicate with a national organization. Therefore, while the BJCP, HWBTA and AHA are sorting themselves out. I would think regional groupings of judges might nominate candidates in response to Russ' call for candidates. Pat Baker ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 14:36:26 +0000 (GMT) From: G.A.Cooper at greenwich.ac.uk Subject: Beer Styles and Taxonomy (International?) I know how most of you have strong views about beer styles, their definitions and the way(s) that beers could be grouped into categories. So I agreed to publish the following information with a view to opening up the discussions to a wider audience. Two meetings have been held to consider the problems and potential benefits of producing internationally agreed definitions of beer styles, and also the problems of producing a taxonomy (or taxonomies) of beers. The meetings were held on 3 August and 20th October 1994 (to coincide with GBBF and GABF) and had representation from interested parties (BJCP, CAMRA, SIBA, PINT etc.) from five different countries, Canada, Finland, Great Britain, Holland and USA. It is hoped that another meeting could be held in the Spring this year. The broad aims were identified as: To promote education into beer styles in both public and academic arenas. To initiate and pursue detailed investigations into beer styles on national and international bases. Develop liaison with consumer groups and interested brewers to promote further interest in defining and using beer styles to enhance interest in beer. Consider how information on beer styles may be best promoted. Initiate an international forum for the consideration of beer style details and drafting of style definitions for use in an international forum. There was much interest in the issue of how definitions are defined and used in practice by brewers and by interested consumers for the promotion of interest in beers and in raising the quality of commercial and home produced beers. The difficulties of producing international definitions were considered as were the prospects of style evolution and the appearance of new styles due to technical developments or marketing initiatives. It was felt that more specific international discussion should be initiated on particular styles with the aim of developing harmonisation on working procedures and definitions. In opening up this subject, I know the possible devastion of my mailbox so I have limited this message to JudgeNet, for now, so that I can gauge reaction and decide on the best forum for any discussion (should there be a new mail list for example?). I can make summaries of the proceedings available if required. Geoff ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Feb 95 10:17:16 EST From: Spencer.W.Thomas at med.umich.edu Subject: Re: Dr. Beer guidelines Thanks for reposting these. I already pointed out a reasonable substitute for DMS (10-15ml liquid from canned corn). I forgot to mention an easy source of food-grade phenol: sore throat lozenges. If you look at the "active ingredients" listing, you'll find that some sore throat lozenges list "phenol" as the active ingredient (I think the brand I used was Cepacol). I dissolved the lozenge in 100ml of water and then added 10ml of that to the beer (resulting, if my memory is correct, in 3mg phenol in 12 oz beer). This gave a good, but not overwhelming, phenolic ("band-aid") aroma. And you can even taste it if you want to! =S ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Feb 1995 13:27:01 EST From: " Bob Paolino, Research Analyst" Subject: Sanctioning fees A suggestion for whatever judge certification program(s) end up in place after the end of AHA co-sponsorship: Establish a range of sanctioning fees based on competition size. Here's a suggestion to kick off the discussion. This is based on the current $40 as the "standard." ACTUAL fees under a new system should be based on an assessment of what it really costs for the staff to record judging points, provide materials for competitions, et cetera. <=75 entries: $20 76-125 entries: $40 126-200 entries: $60 >200 entries: $80 This is NOT a cheap shot at the AHA, but I just don't know what we really get for our $40. The organiser's report form says something about a portion of the fee goes toward recording judging points, but what about the rest of it? I just don't know. Yeah, we get a list of BJCP judges in the region, but that list is a product of the point-recording function; the photocopying for that list is an expense, but not a significant one. We get a folder with blank forms, some printed labels to "personalise" the forms, a couple of brochures, and maybe a couple other items. We get a listing in ZYMURGY, et cetera.... But is it $40 in expenses? There are intangibles, too, that might make it "worth" something, but intangibles aren't expenses. Unlike some people, I don't dismiss the idea of sanctioning a competition. It's a step that shows your entrants that you're serious enough about it that you'll observe certain standards and will take the trouble to report the results and (we hope) do a little self-assessment of how things turned out. But does it cost the AHA $40 to handle that paperwork, particularly when the "overhead" for the organisation is already supported by individual membership fees and a variety of sponsorships? I don't dismiss the idea that the AHA is providing services and has expenses, but the membership never gets the facts laid out for us to examine. Since there's been talk about how to pay for the costs of a judge certification program, I think sanctioning fees are where we ought to look--not, as I suggest in a separate post (reply to Fred Hardy), to the judges who are already incurring expenses to travel to judge at competitions. If the sanctioning fees are to pay for those costs, then the competitions that have more entries and have more judges for whom to record points ought to be paying more than the small competitions with only a dozen or so judges. And that's not a burden on them, either--competitions with more entries take in more entry fees, and competition expenses do not rise proportionately with numbers of entries. In short, the big competitions can afford to pay more, whereas even $40 is a big chunk of cash for a small local competition that doesn't take in so much entry revenue. Our competitions have historically been relatively small, largely local events. (Yes, I have a "bias"--and one that gives me the knowledge of how much these fees are relative to our other expenses and the entry fees that partly offset those expenses.) As we broaden our publicity (and even start to get it out earlier :-) ), our competitions are slowly getting bigger and will continue to grow, but we don't want the headaches of a 300-entry competition either. Even as they grow, we want to keep them relatively small, quality, well-judged events that are FUN for the participants. We also like to keep our entry fees low to make them accessible and to encourage brewers to participate. There are a lot of people out there who are making good beer, but never gave a thought to "competing." Anything we can do to get these people away from brewing as a solely solitary hobby and into the homebrewing "community" is good for homebrewing (and we might even help them make even better beer). The high entry fees we're seeing these days reinforce the image of competition as an "elite" activity that is irrelevant to the homebrewers who just want to make a good beer to enjoy with their friends. If a reasonable entry fee can encourage some of these people to enter a competition just for the fun of it, and they go away with some useful evaluation and go on to become more involved later, then we'll gladly absorb some of the competition expenses. We don't expect to break even, and that's fine--it's a club activity and we have a club treasury and membership to support our activities--but we also don't need what some people consider a superfluous $40 fee. Any future system should be very explicit about what a club gets in return for its sanctioning fee, and to the extent that it covers costs of a judge certification program, a sliding scale by competition size that reflects both the ability to pay and the variation in administrative expense (more entries--> more judges-->more paperwork to record) is the way to go. Now go have a beer, Bob Paolino / Disoriented in Badgerspace /uswlsrap at ibmmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Feb 1995 12:08:24 EST From: " Bob Paolino, Research Analyst" Subject: NO SUBJECT *** Resending note of 02/08/95 05:35 ========================================================================= RE: JudgeNet Digest #963 Wed 08 Feb 1995 Cut the Shuck & Jive and Let's Go (Fred Hardy) FRED SAYS: After reading large quantities of hog wash, it was refreshing to read Scott's and Rick's comments. Wake up folks, there is no free lunch. - -->That's right. We take on personal expense to volunteer to judge. Time, travel expenses, sometimes hotel rooms, et cetera. We do put personal resources in this game to help out other competitions. Don't ask us to start paying more to be volunteers. I suppose a token $5 or $10 bucks wouldn't be too awful. Remember, he's talking about annually. As it is now, we pay to take the exam--that's a one time (maybe twice if you want to upgrade later) $40 (now $50). Fred's talking about something approaching the cost of a retake _every year_. Is the $30 he suggests going to impoverish me? No, but that's not the point. We're already doing this on a volunteer basis for the love of beer--don't pile additional expenses on us. Let the financing of the program be spread out more broadly. Sanctioning fees spread the costs more appropriately, because it comes from the entry fees that the brewers pay to enter. They're getting the main benefit from it anyway. FRED CONTINUES: and $5.00 for each submittal after a competition as a recording fee (the organizer gives the judge/steward a certification form, the judge/steward forwards it for recordation along with the recording fee. - -->NO! NO! NO! And not just for the fee. My objection above applies here. But it's more than that. It's unnecessary work for both the judge and the staff recording the points. It makes a lot more sense for this information to be filed by the competition organiser. It becomes a single piece of mail from someone who has to know who the judges in a competition are anyway. A single piece of mail with a neatly compiled list of names is a lot easier for the certification program staff to deal with than dozens of pieces of mail trickling in. And again, let the sanctioning fees, not individual judge fees, contribute to the costs of recording the information. FRED ASKS: Why record and track 100's of off-the-street judge novices who could care less? - -->Why not? The database program doesn't care. And the data entry time is trivial. More importantly, those judges may not care now, but some will eventually decide to pursue it more formally as part of the organisation. If you don't record that experience before they formally enter the program, it's lost, and your experience measure is inaccurate because the judge-to-be who enters the program after years of experience shows up with fewer points than the novice who takes the exam early in his/her brewing "career." The "rank" should measure actual experience rather than be limited by length of time since deciding to make it "official." Imagine that someone of the stature of Fred Eckhardt or Michael Jackson or (name your favourite beer personality) has been judging for years, but never had an interest in being part of a certification program. Is it going to mean anything to say that s/he's a "recognised" (or whatever name is used in a new program) judge, or do you want to acknowledge past competition experience to get an "accurate" rank? Sure, competition organisers are going to know about someone like Michael Jackson and not care what the rank is (and Jackson would get an honorary title anyway), but what about the guy who's been in a local club for a decade and been a good brewer and a diligent judge, but just never cared about a BJCP rank. How do you signal to an organiser in another city that this person has experience far beyond his rank upon joining if you throw away any record of his pre-membership experience? And please don't characterise judges outside the BJCP as "off-the-street novices." It's insulting to the people who want to learn, and also to experienced judges who don't especially care whether they have a rank. BTW, I _am_ in the program, but I'm not hung up on it. One of these days I may even do a retake so my exam score can catch up to my experience points. Nickel and dime us with all these little fees and dues, though, and some people will say "screw the program" (just as you say "screw the AHA") and will just judge for (gasp!) the love of beer and brewing. FRED SAYS: As for capturing a data base, that is the easiest part. Find an administrator, and beg a few Thousand $s to buy a PC and printer, and build the data base by having interested judges send their BJCP point verifications from the old program, along with their annual dues, and you have the input data for the new base. - -->Except for that annoying reference to unnecessary dues, Fred's right on this one. But let me add another source of data. Don't forget the regional judge lists that get sent to organisers. FRED SAYS: I would like to participate in formulation of a BJCP which represents the interests of homebrewers, judges and sponsors, and which promotes quality !!!!!!!!!!! - -->See, Fred does recognise that the program isn't just for judges--it's ultimately for the brewers, and they should share in the costs of financing the program. They pay entry fees, and a portion of that revenue (in the form of sanctioning fees) is what should finance the program. Don't put the burden on individual volunteer judges. ************************ Now go have a beer, Bob ------------------------------ End of JudgeNet Digest ************************