From synchro!judge-owner at uu6.psi.com Thu May 4 04:28:27 1995 Status: O X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil t nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["25236" "" " 4" "May" "1995" "02:18:33" "EDT" "JudgeNet Administrator" "judge-owner at synchro.com" nil "445" "JudgeNet Digest #1035 (May 04, 1995)" "^Date:" nil nil "5" nil nil nil nil] nil) Received: by truelies.rs.itd.umich.edu (8.6.12/2.2) with X.500 id EAA24017; Thu, 4 May 1995 04:28:25 -0400 Received: from goodman.itn.med.umich.edu by truelies.rs.itd.umich.edu (8.6.12/2.2) with SMTP id EAA24012; Thu, 4 May 1995 04:28:24 -0400 Received: from uu6.psi.com by goodman.itn.med.umich.edu with SMTP id AA27685 (5.65b/IDA-1.4.3 for spencer at umich.edu); Thu, 4 May 95 04:28:22 -0400 Received: from synchro.UUCP by uu6.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINet) via UUCP; id AA28434 for ; Thu, 4 May 95 04:06:52 -0400 Received: by synchro.com (smail2.5) id AA26445; 4 May 95 02:18:33 EDT (Thu) Reply-To: judge at synchro.com (JudgeNet) Errors-To: judge-error at synchro.com Precedence: bulk Message-Id: <9505040218.AA26445 at synchro.com> Date: 4 May 95 02:18:33 EDT (Thu) From: judge-owner at synchro.com (JudgeNet Administrator) To: judge-recipients at synchro.com (JudgeNet Recipients) Subject: JudgeNet Digest #1035 (May 04, 1995) JudgeNet Digest #1035 Thu 04 May 1995 JudgeNet 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 Anti-Prohibitionists may also be interested in LiBeerty: The Libertarian Beer Digest Subscription info: libeerty-request at synchro.com Contents: Re: Style and stuff ("Lee C. Bussy") judge scoring (Btalk) More on Improving Judging Quality (John DeCarlo ) OG and Style / Calibration beers (uswlsrap) out-of-style winners/judge review board (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583) Bamberger Rauch style guidelines (Craig Pepin) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 07:25:48 +0000 From: "Lee C. Bussy" Subject: Re: Style and stuff On 3 May 95, Bill Giffin said this about JudgeNet Digest #1034 (May 03, 1995: > >Lee C. Bussy says > >Just because the OG on a beer is out of style > does not mean that the >taste was out of style. > If the OG is out > of style then the beer is out of style wheter or not it tastes out > of style and most time it does. You missed the point entirely. It is not our job to reverse engineer a person's beer. If it *tastes* too big then it gets marked down. It is possible to have a smaller beer with an overwhelming malt character. This is taken into consideration not the OG. When I got marked down for my beer being too thin and light for style by your statement it should never have been even though it's OG was on the upper end, maybe even too high. So let me get this straight..... I get my points back? Okay, how about we just judge a person's recipe sheet and never taste a beer. That would solve it wouldn't it? > This has been an area where I have seen more errors on the judges > part then on any other part of the score sheets I have received. > One comment on a cream ale, that managed to win a first place, was > " I smell DMS" without stating if that was good or bad but as above > the judge reduced the aroma score by a lot. Too many times we have > judges who truely are not qualified to judge a category judging > them. If a judge smells DMS then it is pretty damned obvious that it is a flaw in a Cream Ale, or most beers fopr that matter. I'd say that judge was qualified to judge that category if he pointed that out and reduced points. - -- -Lee Bussy | Screaming on the Internet with | leeb at southwind.net | Windows 95!!!! 32 Bit made simple! | Wichita, Kansas | http://www.southwind.net/~leeb | ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 09:26:14 -0400 From: Btalk at aol.com Subject: judge scoring There is enough difficulty in getting enough judges for an event, much less _quality_ judges. As organizer for a recent sanctioned event I relied on input from other contest organizers I know and trust for judge recommendations/insight. I reviewed all of the judges score sheets, and have mental notes regarding who did the best jobs and whose comments were a bit sparse. At least this is something to go by. I agree with what Bill Giffin says about: >organized competitions sanctioned by both the AHA and >HWBTA and other then receiving 50 cents worth of paper and >having the points recored neither one did much to improve my >competitions or any others as far as I can tell. I feel that >the sanctioning body should work for the money we have to >pay them... Take a look at the Sanctioned contest application. The first section is titled 'Why Apply...' Five reasons are given, the second is 'To maintain valid standards of judging and achievable levels of excellence.' Oh Yeah!? How? Sanctioning provided this as much as it did the other 4 reasons to sanction. (insert sarcasm =zip, zilch, zero) Figuring costs is the hardest part-we did it by very rough eyeball estimation and only lost $60 on the event. As I wrote in my organizer's report 'I fail to see any value in sanctioning an event'. Another contest related note- I assumed it was customary to provide food for judges and stewards. We did. Comments overheard at my contest suggest otherwise. Whats the story? Regards, Bob Talkiewicz, Binghamton, NY ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 May 95 10:17:05 EST From: John DeCarlo Subject: More on Improving Judging Quality This discussion has prompted me to review in my mind some recent judgings. Let me start off by saying that I probably need correction from other judges myself from time to time, and would welcome the opportunity to improve. There was a Berliner Weisse judged at the German Wheat table. I thought it was darn nice, though not as sour as some bottles I have had. The other two judges (one more experienced than I, who had also been to Germany many times and tasted fresh German wheat beers, though not Berliner Weisse there, and the other a novice judge), thought it was *too* sour. Now, I have to admit to not being an expert on Berliner Weisse, so I didn't press the point. 1) Should I have tried to prevail? Should I have called over the judge coordinator to ask if anyone else who happened to know this style better could help? I don't know, but I feel bad about it in retrospect. 2) What should the judging sheets say? I saw the novice say it was too sour and make disparaging comments under drinkability. I myself said I thought the sourness was good (there were other problems) and could even be *more* lactic. Now that I think about it, this sounds like a case where the brewer is likely to say "I got judged by a pack of idiots--they can't even agree on the sourness issue." The brewer is probably right. Should we have agreed on a phrase to use? Should the comments all agree with each other, or just leave it as individual variation? Am I contaminated by my love of Cantillon Gueuze? Thanks. John DeCarlo, MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA--My views are my own Fidonet: 1:109/131 Internet: jdecarlo at mitre.org ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 May 1995 13:39:00 EDT From: uswlsrap at ibmmail.com Subject: OG and Style / Calibration beers Bill Giffin isn't afraid to speak his mind (I like that kind of thing), but I have to wonder about his post on OGs and style: >If the OG is out of style then the beer is out of style wheter or not it >tastes out of style and most time it does. We as judges should strive to be >able to identify when a beer is not in style and if the beer is out of style >then we should not allow it to win or place in the category entered. Perhaps >the score sheet should have two boxes at the bottom one to indicate that a >beer was un-drinkable and the other to indicate that the beer was out of >style therefore no score was assigned in either case. >>Algis R Korzonas say >> I'm sure that far fewer of us would have been so >>outraged by the out-of-style winners if we saw a comment like >>"This beer's only fault is that it is too big for the style." >Al if the beer is too big for style it is out of style and should not win >anything!!! Why do we have style guidelines at all if this is the attitude >of the judges. If I had a very good beer in the category and it lost out to >a beer that was out of style you can rest assured I would be outraged even >more so because the judge realized that the beer was not what it should be >and still allowed it to win. First, you don't _know_ the OG. Yes, sometimes it's obvious, but the example I offered in my initial post shows that when you assume...you know the rest. It was a 1.058 beer in a 1.055 category (TG=1.014, well within the guidelines). For practical purposes, the OG was in style, and the hop character, et cetera was acknowledged to be in style and well done. But 1.058 _is_ marginally outside the guidelines. Bill seems to want to treat "out-of-style" as an absolute. Guidelines are, well, guidelines and judging is an imperfect art anyway. It would be approaching the height of arrogance for a judge to say, as Bill suggests, that s/he say that a beer is out of style, therefore, s/he won't score it. Entrants have paid their money and beer to get an evaluation and you won't have too many entrants for very long if judges start taking the attitude that they don't have to score a beer if the judge believes it to be out of style. That judge recognised himself from my post and told me he thought the beer (1.058-->1.014 or not) had more body than his megagravity barley wine that finished higher. Well, who's to say whether that's rationalising after the fact, but I suppose it just shows I had a very well-made beer :-) and that it dispels the myth of thin, watery extract beers, at least if the extracts are in the hands of the right brewer :-) :-) In any event, though, I'm sure that judge could not say that my beer had the _alcohol_ taste of his or any other barley wine. He made a mistake. I make mistakes. We all do. Should we presume to refuse to score beers because we think them a tad out of style?!? Then there's the question of awards. Again, you run into problems of treating guidelines as absolutes. Is that Oktoberfest that's a few OG points too high (or too low) but otherwise excellent automatically eliminated from consideration for an award when the alternative is a thoroughly in-style but noticeably flawed entry? I would hope not. Bill said he would be outraged if he had a very good beer in a category and lost out to one that was too big (or too small). Ceteris paribus I would tend to agree, but rarely is everything else equal. Too often, we don't have that very good beer as the alternative to the slightly out-of-style beer. I would much rather give the award to the slightly out-of-style beer--and (as Al wisely recommends) make it clear that it was slightly off-style and why--than to give it to a largely in-style (in recipe formulation) beer with process flaws. But rest assured, Bill, I did much what you suggest in that competition to which Dennis referred in his post on the calibration beers. I was judging English Pale Ales, and gave a pretty high score to one that I acknowledged to be too big for an IPA, at least according to the guidelines (by historical standards, perhaps it wasn't too big, but it was by the guidelines used in the competition. Or at least it seemed to be; I could have made the same kind of mistake that was made on my beer, except I can say that the alcohol was VERY noticeable.) That beer had the highest score for the category, but when we retasted all the contenders side-by-side for awards, that beer ended up getting third place instead of first, because we decided that in balancing everything out that the first and second place beers (there were a few Scottish Ales combined with the Pales, and I believe a Scottish took one of the awards, but don't recall which) were more representative of the styles entered that the in-style question outweighed (in our judgment for that particular flight of beers) the minor flaws that caused them to score lower. In a different set of beers the too-big IPA might have won anyway. I don't think I have a significant bias--as a brewer or a judge--for "big" beers. In fact, I'll be entering both the Big and Huge (here in Madison) and the upstart Small and Tiny :-) (Ann Arbor). My concern was that judges not overcompensate in response to the perception of a big beer bias. Bill's remarks indicate that he may be doing just that. (And speaking of the Small and Tiny, Spencer, if you like the format of the Big and Huge entry form, let me know and I'll send you a disk. I guess James Spence didn't want you to use the AHA form either ;-) Of course, I was the one who thought to ask for permission on how or whether I should use it for an HWBTA competition.) A quick note on calibration beers: Bill considers them a waste of time. I agree that they may not be _essential_ but I appreciate the reasons for doing them if time permits. At the very least it's a warm-up (oops, should I have said warm-up if Roger is reading? :-) ) exercise. Even judging an American Swill gets you started and ready for judging at that early hour. Ideally, although I don't think it happens, it can give the higher or lower scoring judges a signal to adjust. The "warm-up" argument is enough for me. I have mixed feelings about matching calibration beers for each style, though. My reservation is that some judges may view it as "the standard" by which they judge the entries. As long as the judges are cautioned on that, I think it's fine if you can find it worth assembling a collection of calibration beers in all styles. A good compromise would be a few beers distributed to the tables such that you're in the same ballpark. A data point on the Chicago calibration beers. Porter: I scored it a 40 (high among eight judges), there were some around 36-39, and the bottom score was 32. That judge commented that I must score high; I replied that he must score low (trust me, he does :-). We talked about the beer's characteristics and he went up to 34. It was Left Hand Porter. You can judge for yourself if you like. Unfortunately, none of the entries came close to that 40 score, and I was wishing that I'd entered a porter of mine. Of course, the judges in the category _I_ entered may well have wished that they had sent one of that style :-) :-) :-) I didn't find out what the pale ale calibration was. I had a hard time bringing that one up to the high 20's (although I did go from 24 to 29 once the plastic smell of the cup went away). Now go have a beer, Bob Paolino / Disoriented in Badgerspace uswlsrap at ibmmail.com THIS SPACE UNDER RENOVATION ------------------------------ Date: 3 May 95 13:06:00 -0500 From: korz at iepubj.att.com (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583) Subject: out-of-style winners/judge review board Bill writes: >>Algis R Korzonas says >> I'm sure that far fewer of us would have been so >>outraged by the out-of-style winners if we saw a comment like >>"This beer's only fault is that it is too big for the style." > >Al if the beer is too big for style it is out of style and should not win >anything!!! Why do we have style guidelines at all if this is the attitude >of the judges. If I had a very good beer in the category and it lost out to >a beer that was out of style you can rest assured I would be outraged even >more so because the judge realized that the beer was not what it should be >and still allowed it to win. I disagree most strongly. First of all, I consider myself a pretty good judge but I don't believe that I could tell the difference between a 1074 OG Traditional bock and a 1080 OG Traditional bock. Could you? I'll bet I could tell when a Mild or an Ordinary is 10 OG points too big, but I still don't know if I could bring myself to mark it down more than 5 score points. If a beer is clearly, outrageously out-of-style, like that 1050 Ordinary Bitter, I would have no qualms about marking down the beer 10 points ensuring that it does not win a ribbon. Difficulty aside, what are the guidelines? Bitterness range, OG range, alcohol range, FG range, descriptions of body, maltiness, hop aroma and flavour, perhaps carbonation level. These are all very subjective measurements and unless you've got a pocket HPLC, you cannot be sure that this beer has too many IBUs and as such should be scored a swift "19." There are some characteristics that are missing, e.g. there is no mention of sourness in the Wit description. Technically, that means that a Wit which has a lactic component should be marked down. Well, personally, I guess I have to retract my previous statement that we *must* follow *only* the guidelines for the competition. If I had come across a Wit with a reasonable amount of lactic sourness, I would not have marked off for it. However, if an IPA is underhopped, I would mark off for that. If a bitter was not malty or not bitter enough, I would mark off for that. If cream ale had too much body, I would mark off for that. If after all is said and done, the choice in American Light Lagers was for the slightly oxidized American Premium that scored 35 and the overly big-bodied Cream Ale which scored 35, I would probably lean towards passing (or awarding a ribbon to) the American Premium. If however, the American Premium was clearly more flawed than the Cream Ale and had scored only a 32, then I would side with the Cream Ale. My point regarding following the competition's guidelines was more in regards to styles like Porter (where the AHA guidelines say "No roast barley character.") and Dunkelweizen (where the AHA guidelines say "Roasted malt and chocolatelike flavors evident."). We know these to be wrong but until they are corrected, we need to judge beers according to them. I did not mean that we should simply toss out beers that don't fall into guidelines that still have a few flaws. Personally, I weigh stylistic errors evenly with technical flaws when it comes to marking down. Colour is a guideline -- would you withold a ribbon from a beer that scored 45 although it was too dark? I wouldn't. If indeed we threw out all the beers that fell anywhere outside the style guidelines, assuming we were able to tell such things with accuracy, we might be left with picking an oxidized or infected beer for a ribbon, no? You wouldn't happen to be that organizer who announced at a 1994 east-coast competition: "If a beer is out-of-style, do not score it higher than 25." would you? >I agree with Kieran that there should be feed back about the judges scoring >of beers. Should it be the organizer or the sanctioning body is the >question. I feel that it should fall on the sanctioning body to review the I think that it would be far too much work for organizers or sanctioning bodies to go through scoresheets -- also, they do not have the benefit of having tasted the beer. No, I think the burden should fall on the entrants to complain when there is a problem. We're all judges and we have had our beers misjudged. We can tell when our beer has been misjudged and we should do something about keeping bad judges in line. I feel that the regional, distributed administration of the BJCP can help in this point. What if each region was required to form a review board? Entrants who feel their beers were misjudged would have to write a letter and include a copy of the scoresheet. If the scoresheet contained things like "this beer tastes like pi**" or other inappropriate comments, the board could simply write a letter reprimanding the judge and noting it in their database. Multiple offenses would result in docking of points or dismissal from the program in severe cases. What if the problem was with judging the beer? Well, then the board would have to get a bottle of the beer to taste. This is where regional administration would really help. Given that this procedure (i.e. sending the beer) would require previous approval from the board, then this would keep the numbers of "beer sample required" complaints down. Perhaps also the recipe could be required along with the initial written complaint and maybe both the judge's and brewer's names kept anonymous while the board reviewed the beer. Comments? Al. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 14:54:05 -0400 (EDT) From: Craig Pepin Subject: Bamberger Rauch style guidelines With the upcoming Rauchbier roundup, I've noticed something in the AHA style guidelines, and I'd like to suggest maybe a sytle adjustment for following years. 22a Bamberg-Style Rauchbier, 1.048-1.052 (12-13) 4.3-4.8% 20-30 IBU 10-20 SRM. "Oktoberfest style (see Oktoberfest) with a sweet smoky armoa and flavor. Dark amber to dark brown. Intensity of smoke medium to high. Low diacetyl ok." The incongruity I see lies in the starting gravity, which ends where the Oktoberfest style begins. A quick perusal of various Michael Jackson books gives no Rauch S.G. higher than 1.054, and most within the AHA style range. In a recent tasting of Kaiserdom's Rauch (the only one I've seen in the U.S.) I didn't get any kind of full-bodied malt flavor that I come to expect from Oktoberfests, and the body and maltiness was consistent with what I'd expect from a 1.048 beer. So then why is Oktoberfest the "base" style against which it should be compared? It seems to me that Vienna would be a better fit, for comparative purposes. Anybody out there been to Bamberg recently care to add their .02? If I don't hear anything, I guess I'll be forced to stop there myself this summer. It's too late for the Rauch roundup, of course, but maybe something to think about for next year. Which raises one more question. Should the BJCP develop its own style guidelines, or continue to rely on the imperfect association collections currently out there? I don't see so it much as starting from scratch, as enhancing and tweaking what is already available. Availability of such detailed and expert style guidelines could make the a BJCP sanction of a competition worth something than just reporting of points. Craig Pepin Duke University/TRUB ------------------------------ End of JudgeNet Digest ************************