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Subject: JudgeNet Digest #1206 (Jan 29, 1996)
Date: 29 Jan 96 01:18:16 EST (Mon)
Message-Id: <9601290118.AA12073 at synchro.com>


JudgeNet Digest #1206				   Mon 29 Jan 1996


                               JudgeNet
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Contents:
  Re: Guidelines                           (John DeCarlo              )
  Re: rationale for a distribution         (John DeCarlo              )
  Corrections to your judging record       (Scott Bickham)
  Separate tasting and essay exams         (Scott Bickham)
  Re: Braggot                              (Spencer W Thomas)
  Ken Schramm: Historical Braggot with Hops -Reply (Spencer W Thomas)
  Roll your own style guide                (Aaron Birenboim)
  Education and the BJCP                   (SIR ROB BATES)
  Guidelines                               (Norman Dickenson)
  BJCP Grading, Fall 1995                  (Scott Bickham)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 96 07:39:50 EST
From: John DeCarlo               <jdecarlo at homebrew.mitre.org>
Subject: Re: Guidelines

Craig Pepin and Bill Giffin's responses to my off-hand comment about who 
prefers larger beers makes me back off and explain a little.  All the judges
I talk to about this issue agree that they should be careful about giving 
larger beers better scores simply because they will almost certainly be more
flavorful and complex.  I really meant that many I have talked to without 
net access haven't even thought much about this issue.

It certainly takes lots of discipline to look for too-big-for-style (TBFS)
beers. They will almost certainly taste better.  They will be more complex. 
Probably exhibit features you want that the others don't.

*AND*, they will last longer.  If there was lots of shipping and handling 
and time involved, the beer may not taste TBFS as clearly (malt and hops may
have oxidized slightly, for instance).

Not to mention palate fatigue, where it becomes harder to notice TBFS over 
time.

Also, as I stated before, if the beer is an excellent example of the style 
in every way except that there is too much alcohol, there can clearly be 
disagreement as to whether it should score 24 or 30 or 35.

Unless there is clear discussion and agreement on this issue (NOT JUST ON 
THE NET), it will still remain a concern.

Maybe instructions from the BJCP to contest organizers can suggest they 
mention this issue to the judges?  Or the newsletter to the judges, as part 
of an overall educational portion?

John DeCarlo, MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA--My views are my own
Fidonet:  1:109/131  Internet:  jdecarlo at mitre.org


------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 96 07:52:12 EST
From: John DeCarlo               <jdecarlo at homebrew.mitre.org>
Subject: Re: rationale for a distribution

Steve Russell writes:
>The scoring distribution I would like the BJCP exam to have is:
>
>        <60     60-69   70-79   80-89   90-100
>        ---     -----   -----   -----   ------

>percent 10      25-30   35-40   15-20   5-10

And what do you suggest we do to help this happen?
I see two basic options:
1) Grade on a curve.  Wouldn't help anyone and is a bad idea.
2) Develop an exam training program and suggest everyone partake before 
taking the exam.  Any volunteers?


John DeCarlo, MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA--My views are my own
Fidonet:  1:109/131  Internet:  jdecarlo at mitre.org


------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 10:16:20 -0500 (EST)
From: Scott Bickham <bickham at dave.nrl.navy.mil>
Subject: Corrections to your judging record


In April, the BJCP plans to mail everyone a copy of their current
judging record, and undoubtedly there will lots of omissions.
To plan ahead, I suggest the following:  when judging at a competition,
keep copies of the flier in your judging file and pencil
in the event, date and your points on your judging record.
If this competition is listed on your new judging record, then
you can toss the flier.  If is does not appear for whtever
reason, send a short letter to the BJCP mailing address
requestion the correction, and if you include the name of the
organizer, then we can probably track down the organizer and get
a copy of the report.  I had to do this a few times even in the
AHA/HWBTA days, but this will hopefully become less common when
the BJCP becomes more experienced at record keeping.

Cheers, Scott
- -- 
====================================================================
E-Mail: bickham at dave.nrl.navy.mil		FAX:(202) 404-7546
						
Office: Naval Research Laboratories		Home and BJCP:
	Code 6691, Complex Systems		7507 Swan Point Way
	Washington, D.C  20375			Columbia, MD  21045
	(202) 404-8632				(410) 290-7721
====================================================================

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 10:50:53 -0500 (EST)
From: Scott Bickham <bickham at dave.nrl.navy.mil>
Subject: Separate tasting and essay exams

With the impending passing of the BJCP by-laws, I would like
to announce that experimentation with separate essay and tasting
exams will begin in April with the Washington D.C. exam.
Tentatively, the plan is this:

 - the exam will still take 3 hours
 - participants have the option of combining the exams and retaining
  the current format or separating the two portions.  
 - The latter group will be given the beers 50 minutes, 80 minutes, 
  110 minutes, and 140 minutes after the exam begins.  Exams are
  collected after 3 hours.
 - Those wishing to have separate exams will have their essay answers
  collected and their first beer served after 140 minutes.  Beers
  will be served at 10 minute intervals and the exams collected
  after a total of three hours.  Their first beer will be the
  same as the 4th beer for the other group, and since the proctors
  will have already judged the other three beers, they can
  spend their time pouring and serving beer instead of rushing
  to serve, pour and judge each beer in a scant ten minutes.
 - those that only want to retake the essay portion of the exam
  may leave after the written answers are collected; those
  taking the tasting part only must arrive 10-15 minutes before
  that section of the exam.

Please e-mail or post your comments.  If this runs smoothly, it
could be done on a regular basis.

Cheers,
Scott Bickham
- -- 
====================================================================
E-Mail: bickham at dave.nrl.navy.mil		FAX:(202) 404-7546
						
Office: Naval Research Laboratories		Home and BJCP:
	Code 6691, Complex Systems		7507 Swan Point Way
	Washington, D.C  20375			Columbia, MD  21045
	(202) 404-8632				(410) 290-7721
====================================================================

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 11:31:45 -0500
From: Spencer W Thomas <spencer at engin.umich.edu>
Subject: Re: Braggot 

    Fred> Maybe two categories are needed (still and sparkling are
    Fred> silly, IMO).

    Fred> Traditional braggot should not contain hops, but may be
    Fred> spiced.

    Fred> Show braggot is sparkling and may contain detectable hops as
    Fred> well as other herbs and spices. This category allows for
    Fred> beer with a bunch of honey in it. Digby documents at least
    Fred> one braggot which had a tiny bit of hops in it, and it was
    Fred> brewed after the Middle Ages, so maybe this latter is
    Fred> "Modern" braggot.

The notion of separating "historical" from "modern" braggot has some
appeal to me.  This lets us continue to evolve the style in a modern
idiom (and what is homebrewing about if not creativity?) while
recognizing the historical roots of the style.

Responding to some other issues that have been raised in this
discussion:

I have trouble with the concept of "commercial" braggot from the 17c
and earlier, as distinguished from "homebrewed" braggot.  Digby, for
example, was brewing for the royal court.  Is this "homebrewing", or
"commercial"?  Most "commercial" ale was produced by individuals for
sale in their alehouse.  Many households brewed their own ales.  I
have pages from an early "housewife's manual" (Gervase Markham,
1568-1637) describing making ale, starting with malting (including
instructions on building the malt house).  In this
case, a "housewife" was maintaining a household consisting not just of
the family, but also the servants, laborers, etc.  Strictly speaking,
this is homebrewing, but not in the way that most of us understand it
today.  

Unfortunately, we have few published examples to work from.  I infer
from Digby's single braggot recipe, that braggot was viewed (to some
extent) as a way of "stretching" the malt to make a stronger beverage.
Thus, in an extreme view, braggot is a beer/ale with lots of honey.

The "50% rule," to my knowledge, was first invoked in the 2nd or 3rd
Mazer Cup competition, to prevent people from entering beers with a
little bit of honey as braggots.  It was very clearly based on
experience in the earlier competitions, and a desire to make it clear
that the competition was for MEAD, not for BEER.

Finally, I have to assume that braggot was made in countries *other
than England*.  Is there anybody out there who can comment on
historical mead making traditions in other countries?

=Spencer Thomas in Ann Arbor, MI        (spencer at umich.edu)

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 11:35:09 -0500
From: Spencer W Thomas <spencer at engin.umich.edu>
Subject: Ken Schramm: Historical Braggot with Hops -Reply

Ken Schramm, mead-maker extraordinaire (my opinion), and co-originator
of the Mazer Cup Mead Competition, comments on the Hops in Braggot
issue.  (I am forwarding his message.  Opinions expressed here are
his, not necessarily mine, although I tend to mostly agree with him.)

=Spencer

                           ---------------

An equally debatable point might be that the Brits and Norse weren't
the only ones making fermented honey beverages.  The Poles and Slavs
have long and storied mead making heritages, and since there is far
more evidence of the use of hops on the continent in 10th and 11th
century brewing, and since it appears that braggot originated as a
means of stoking up thye gravity when "mault" might not have been in
such abundant supply, it seems to bear investigation into whether the
mainlanders were at using hops and making bragots, and for that
matter, whether braggot was the idea of the Brits/Norse in the first
place.  The belgians have a hstory of using honey and everyother d-mn
thing in their beer, and while they may not have called it braggot, we
don't call yeast "godisgood" anymore either.

The last thing I would question innthis whole debate is whether we
need to judge these bragots on historical example alone.  We don't
judge vienna/oktoberfests based on Dreher  vintage recipes and
standards.  We judge them against a Platonic ideal which is an
amalgam of the best commercial examples available (freqently not even
in the condition which they should be assessed), on currently
available brewing materials and technology, and our own notions of
what the style should be like in the late 20th century.  If we
applied the same standards to everything else we judge, we would be
judging really bad stuff, for the most part.If we all lived by what
the germans define as beer, there'd be no fruit, no spice, no
un-malted wheat, no corn, rice, rye, no honey, no Belgian fun at all.
 We run the competitions, and we have the opportunity to develop
whatever standards we choose.  Perhaps the sub-categories need to be
restrictive in some cases, and have a "freestyle" pressure valve to
deal with the slop.  It's our job to work on this, but in the final
analysis, isn't the notion to help us all improve and to acknowledge
and reward the brewers who make things that are REALLY COOL?

"Let us not be shackled by early15th century restraints, lest we long
to lead our existences on the dark side of the Renaissance"

Ken Schramm  (schramk at wcresa.k12.mi.us)
1996

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 96 10:21:17 MST
From: birenboi at ataway.aptec.com (Aaron Birenboim)
Subject: Roll your own style guide

I have been tasked with generating a style guide for the Dukes of Ale's
Spring Thing competition in april.  This is a fairly large competition,
and we expect about 200 entries.

For years I have been bitching about some of the AHA guidelines, and
bitching about the BIG beers usually win phenomenon.   I bitched to
the wrong people.... now I'm in charge of new and improved guidelines.  ;-)

If anybody out there has an ELECTRONIC copy of some style guidelines
(ASCII text prefered) I'd like to see them.

My goal is to fix up or expand written style descriptions, include
SG IBU Color numbers with the written description, and re-categorize
styles w.r.t. gravity.   For example, we do not intend to judge
all "bitters" together.   We will have a category like "Big Pale Ales"
which will include IPA and ESB .... and whatever else you might siggest.
Then we might have "Odinary pale ales" which might include English Pale
Ale, American Pale Ale, Golden Ale (from the GABF Guidelines)...
you get the idea?

I plan on posing this work on my web page listed below as I go along.
I need to bring a rough draft of the guidelines to a meeting in 2 weeks,
and I should have a final guideline for the competition within a month.

Thanks in advance for your support,

Aaron Birenboim      | aaron at ataway.aptec.com          | Personal :
ATA                  | http://www.aptec.com/~birenboi/ | mole at netcom.com
1900 Randolph Rd. SE | (505) 767-1221 (Desk/Lab)       |
ABQ, NM   87106      | (505) 247-8371 FAX 768-1379     |

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 13:04:16 EST
From: WKNN70A at prodigy.com (SIR ROB BATES)
Subject: Education and the BJCP

There seems to be some misconception in some circles as to what the 
BJCP is all about.  The charter of the BJCP is now and has always 
been to test and certify judges. Period.

As far as education goes, the (shudder) AHA is much better equipped 
for the task of education than the BJCP.  

The BJCP should, in my humble yet time worn experience, NOT try to be 
all things to all people.  That is something that the AHA has tried 
to do, and as a result has become a monolithic, cumbersome and 
imperialistic organization.  Witness the way they tried to take 
control of the BJCP and when they couldn't, they tried to squash it 
like a bug.

The AHA should do what it does best (educate) and the BJCP should 
continue to test, evaluate, rank and certify judges.  That is what it 
is set up to do, and that's what it should continue to do.

We are an all-volunteer organization with no paid staff.  Nobody's 
making any money at this, unlike that other outfit (non-profit my ass.
.)

Attempts to enlarge the scope of the program may just produce another 
self-righteous, bloated, bureauratic, holier-than-thou, immovable AHA-
like entity.

I believe I know what I'm talking about, as I sat on the BJCP 
committe for three years as president of the HWBTA.

OK, flack vest donned.....

Rob Bates, Regional Coordinator, BJCP


------------------------------

Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 10:11:24 -0700
From: Norman Dickenson <Norman.Dickenson at sonoma.edu>
Subject: Guidelines

                      Subject:                              Time:  8:23 AM
  OFFICE MEMO         Guidelines                            Date:  1/26/96

Bill Giffin offers a debateable view of the beer judging world
in yesterdays's issue of the Digest:

>Any of you who have taken a course in organizational behavior are aware that
>in any organization there is a formal organization which states how the
>organization thought it should be set up and an informal organization which
>is truly how the organization works.

>Perhaps the problem we have in the judging of beer is that we have an
>informal set of guidelines that supersede the formal written guidelines.

>If in fact there is an informal set of guidelines then the tasting portion
>of the judging exam is invalid with no way in the world to correct it
>because all of the senior judges' perception of what a beer truly is has
>been corrupted by the system.

Ah, yes!  I too was a Sociology major as an undergraduate.  Thankfully,
the years have lent me the maturity, experience and wisdom to recognize
that just because academia offers a dicipline doesn't mean it is either
useful or has any scientific validity.  Bill's hypothesis that senior judges'
perception of what a beer style is perpetuates itself and perversely
subverts the accurate perceptions of newbies is nothing more than an
idle hypothesis with no scientific proof of correlations.  I have won
three best-of-show awards (American Wheat twice with O.G. 1.045 and
1.047, and a Bohemian Pils with O.G. 1.051) and know or have heard of 
a number of persons who have won BoS ribbons with low gravity beers
Over the years, I have also won 6 ribbons at the AHA
National Comp in the categories of Export, Kolsch, Porter, Fruited Bock &
Barleywine.  All were brewed within the competition style parameters.  I
wonder about the motivations of people who make conspiratorial allegations
even if the conspiracy is subliminal.     
 
>When  I started entering competitions  a friend of mine told me if you want
>to win at the National brew BIG BIG BIG.  I didn't and I didn't.

There you have it.  Cause and effect!  You don't comment of the factors of 1) 
luck, 2) brewing skill,  3) long lag period between 1st and 2nd round, 4)
the majority of beers entered in any competition, be it local or national,
are, frankly, not very good.  A good beer brewed out of style and judged
as out of style can often easily outscore most beers in a flight.

>To add to Jim Ellington wonderful diatribe on the exam.  With the >elaborate
>procedures that the BJCP has gone through to grade the exam the internal
>control was laking to the point that if the judge co-ordinator didn't like
>you your score could be dropped or if he liked you raised and no one would
>ever be the wiser.

Is this another conspiratorial hypothesis, or are there facts on which
to base this statement?  The CURRENT Exam program has two graders
for the exam, an Associate Exam Director who review the scores against
the exam and the Exam Director who also reviews the scores against the
exam.  All four persons would be knowledgeable of and a participant in
a process whereby the score assigned to an exam is changed from that which
was given by the two graders.  At no time does anyone who scores or 
reviews exams ever know the name of the person who wrote the exam
until after a score has been recorded by the Program Administrator. 
Perhaps Bill reads Irving Stone books?

>Jim I believe that you hit the nail smack on the head with a BFH with your
>comment on Ivory Tower elitism.

I keep getting this feeling that people are forgetting that this is an
ASSOCIATION of people with similar interests.  It is democratic in
organization with elected representatives who serve on a Board of
Directors to guide the activities of the association.  There are 
committees of appointed volunteers who flesh out the policies and
procedures of the Exam Program and made recommendations to the
BoD.  If the BoD doesn't like the performance of the Exam Director,
he/she can be "let go" by majority vote of the board.  If the membership
doesn't like the performance of his/her elected representative, then
they vote in another one at the next election.  Like any other group
activity in life, if you aren't willing to learn about and participate in 
the organizational activities of the association, then you have
no cause to complain.  Is your pint glass half full or half empty?  Only
you can answer that question.  It isn't like we are in the business of 
certifying heart surgeons or space shuttle pilots.  This is supposed 
to be fun!  Sorry for the length of MY rant.

Norman Dickenson
National Judge
Examination Associate Director  


------------------------------

Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1996 14:26:47 -0500 (EST)
From: Scott Bickham <bickham at dave.nrl.navy.mil>
Subject: BJCP Grading, Fall 1995

Although we do not grade on a curve, the following statistics
apply to the 52 exams given in the Fall of 1995.  Two sets
of exams still need to be approved by the Associate Director,
but the scores are rarely changed so I included them here.

Score	Number	Percent
50's	2	4
60's	14	27
70's	25	48
80's	10	19
90's	1	2

This looks remarkably similar to the curve that Steve Russell thought
should apply to this type of exam.  I would personally like to
see one or two more 90's, but the one that made it was head and shoulders
above the other 51 exams in this group.  I think these results
more accurately represent the scoring, even though the data set is
pretty small, because a variety of exams and scoring techniques
are hidden in the statistics over the last 10 years.  With over 20%
of the judges scoring 80 or higher and almost 70% scoring above
70, it's safe to say that the grading has not gotten tougher.

Scott
- -- 
====================================================================
E-Mail: bickham at dave.nrl.navy.mil		FAX:(202) 404-7546
						
Office: Naval Research Laboratories		Home and BJCP:
	Code 6691, Complex Systems		7507 Swan Point Way
	Washington, D.C  20375			Columbia, MD  21045
	(202) 404-8632				(410) 290-7721
====================================================================

------------------------------


End of JudgeNet Digest
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