Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 01:10:02 -0500
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Subject: JudgeNet Digest #1244 (Mar 28, 1996)

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JudgeNet Digest #1244                              Thu 28 Mar 1996

                               JudgeNet
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents:

  Specialty/Honey Beers                    (John Landreman)
  judging "alternate" styles               (John Isenhour)
  Re: Specialty Ingredients                (Tim Artz)
  re: anonymous specialty entries          (Darryl Davidson)

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Date: Wed, 27 Mar 1996 15:12:03 -0700
From: jlandrem at atmel.com (John Landreman)
Subject: Specialty/Honey Beers

Greetings,

I would like add to the Specialty Beer discussion. This last weekend I judged
the Specialty Beer catagory at the March Mashfest in Fort Collins. One of the
entries was a Honey Wheat beer. This style description did not exactly start
me salivating with anticipation.

I could not have been more wrong. The brewer of this beer definitely knew
something about using honey. Not only was the honey character evident but it
added a great floral aroma and flavor to the beer. This was not your average
clover honey. It received scores of 39, 39 and 37 I believe and ended
up being chosen BOS. It's these surprises that makes judging enjoyable.

John Landreman
Colorado Springs, CO

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Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1996 09:17:32 -0600 (CST)
From: isenhour at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu (John Isenhour)
Subject: judging "alternate" styles

Sullivan51 types about: Re: Fruit / Herb / Specialty Again

> My experience has been that some are good but most are awful.

I don't know that I can restrict this to any certain style!  Many large
comp's I've been to have had vast arrays of very poorly made pale ale or
stout or any popular style.  I think there is a general trend to better
beers over the last 8 years or so, but it still depends on the
skill/experience of the brewers.  Alternative styles are hard to learn 
(especially something like fruited lambic) and fruit/herb beers are not 
likely to be made as a "standard" brew so the learning/experience curve 
is steeper than, for instance, a pale ale.

> Ms.Wotring jumps in with:
> >I use the "does it work?" approach,

> The "does it work for me" idea has some merit

Use caution with the "for me" part.  My all time worst judge comment 
posted a while ago where the only comment was "this dont do it for me" 
comes to mind.  Its important to try to distance yourself from personal 
preference as much as possible, for instance I dont like nutmeg but I 
have awarded prizes for beers with nutmeg in them because they did work 
in that brew.


John DeCarlo writes:

> that may well have won ribbons if it weren't for this.  One was specifically
> a peach lambic a couple of years ago when there weren't many good entries in
> the category--excellent lambic but no peach flavor or aroma.

We must have judged the same beer.  I thought one was a great lambic but 
could detect no fruit at all, it was a shame to mark it down.  One thing 
I have learned from professional brewing is that style is what the beer 
turns out like, not what you brewed "at" (hopefully they are close:)

> Perhaps the style portion of the forms can clearly state "Entering a beer or
> mead as a fruit or herb or specialty means it will be judged on how well the
> special ingredient(s) are perceived

This makes a lot of sense to me.  There is also a problem of spice
degradation, they fade at different rates.  When I put a wit bier on tap,
the orange is up front, by the time its about 1/2 consumed the corriander
etc., is starting to dominate (the middle 130 gallons are perfect:) I
think this happens a lot at competitions where the balance falls off or
some ingredient is not 'loud' enough at the time of evaluation.  Ginger 
is very persistant, nutmeg lasts forever.

Dion writes:

> So how would you taste a special method?  B-}

Making your own caramel sugars, home smoked malts, Steinbeer style - 
things like this can be detected.  I used some real scottish peat smoked 
malts and got slammed in the specialty and scotch ale catagories because 
the peatyness was percieved as an off phenolic rather than an appropriate 
one, so experience in evaulating special methods makes a difference.

 -john

- --
John Isenhour                                    "unix is not your mother"
Brewmaster/National Judge                        Joe's Brewery, Champaign IL
Library & Information Science                    isenhour at uiuc.edu


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

Date: Thu, 28 Mar 96 10:33:46 EST
From: Tim Artz <tartz at btg.com>
Subject: Re: Specialty Ingredients


>I believe (without looking it up) that the rule is that the specialty
>ingredients should be characterized in the beer.  Where applicable this means
>these ingredients should specifically be expressed in the beer color, aroma
>and flavor...right?  I agree that if you are entering an herb beer and you
>have used 4 spices with only 2 noticeable in the beer, you should only claim
>the 2.  The "does it work for me" idea has some merit also, as long as the
>ingredients listed are characterized in the final product.  If they do not,
>then it does not matter whether it works for me or not.   The beer would be
>out of style as defined by the brewer himself.

There are two problems with the approach where judges are looking for
"noticeable" character from the specialty ingredients.  First, many judges
are not familiar with the flavors of some ingredients.  I know judges who do
not know the difference between oregano and basil or who have never eaten a
fresh sour cherry. Unless the character of the special ingredient is
commonplace (e.g., chili peppers) or simply huge, these judges may miss the
brewer's idea of special ingredient character.  (This is not to say that
beers with aggressive use of special ingredients cannot be quite good.) 

In judging Belgian beers (esp. Wit) there are some judges who do not
understand the flavor of coriander much less how it melds with the flavor of
bitter orange peel.  This brings up the second problem with this approach:
some special ingredient flavors truly meld with each other or with the beer
flavor to create a unique character.  A beer that has been brewed to marry
the flavor and aroma subtleties of ingredients will suffer when judged
according to how much the special ingredients beat the judge about the nose
and tongue. A culinary example of flavor melding is Madras curry powder,
which has an aggressive character which is unmistakeable as "curry," but it
is in fact a blend of spices and difficult to separate into components on
one's palate.
>
>Again, I contend that Specialty should be reserved for special techniques or
>fermentables.  Fruit, herb and herb/fruit should be disqualified from this
>category.  If not disqualified, they should be scored low and not allowed to
>win with a comment that the beer was out of style.  This is a worthy
>controversy.

I disagree with this contention because a beer meeting the requirements for
the Specialty category (i.e., brewed with special techniques or unique
fermentables) may also have been brewed with fruit and/or herbs.  For
example, a maple mocha stout or a honey apple ale would be just at home in
either the herb/fruit or the specialty category.

What BURP has done in past competitions is to lump all
herb/smoke/fruit/specialty beers into a single category called "Novelty".
Each subcategory is judged separately, and a mini-BOS is used to determine
the 3 ribbon winners for Novelty.  

When a competition gets large enough to warrant breaking this category into
two, I suggest judging herb and fruit as one category and smoke and
specialty as another.  Then, for example, all herb beers would be judged as
a flight and all fruit beers judged as another.  Those entries which each
table considers worthy of a ribbon would be forwarded to a mini-BOS to award
ribbons in herb/fruit.

Tim Artz
tartz at btg.com


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

Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1996 17:55:01 -0700
From: darryl.davidson at uvm.edu (Darryl Davidson)
Subject: re: anonymous specialty entries

Alan Folsom asked about anonymous entries, which brought this
to mind:

The local group where I went to grad school has had an anonymous 
member for quite some time.  He/she makes regular contributions to the
newsletter, under a pseudonym (I.M. Quaffing, if memory serves), and 
in last May's big competition, arranged to have another member cover 
the entry fee for some entries.  There was a lot of discussion over 
whether the guy that paid for the entries was I.M. (writing style 
and things mentioned just didn't match to him), and more talk trying 
to get him to loosen his tongue about who I.M. was (throughout, he 
stuck to the story that the beers showed up on his porch with a note, 
or something hokey like that)... so we entered them under I.M.'s 
name, and during the contest, when I.M. placed in a couple of 
categories, the club leader explained the story to let everyone else 
in on the joke.  Some even hoped I.M. would place well in the B.O.S. 
round, to flush him/her out that way.  No dice.  And the ribbons 
won were accepted on I.M.'s behalf by the same guy that had 
signed a check for the entries.  I've been gone from there almost
a year, so I dunno if I.M.'s been revealed to date, and don't 
really care.  Anyone that wants to remain anon., should be allowed 
to without a lot of grief.  

As for a cabbage and cream-corn beer...  not on purpose, but 
*been there, done that*.  There's nothing like dumping three full
batches of infected beer to make an apartment reek for days and 
leave you with an acute dislike (and heightened sensitivity) for 
DMS.  Haven't done a Band-Aid Bock yet, though, if you're up for 
suggestions.  I see a hint of Iodine, a dollop of disinfectant, amid a 
warming Listerine and malt background.  Balance your hops to the 
ingredients carefully, though, since it'd be a serious brewing 
faux-pas to have floral Cascade hops fighting against Glade Christmas 
Potpourri Spices (tm) aerosol room deodorizer aromatics or Saaz 
hops combatting pine-oil/Pine-Sol in the aftertaste.  Tradition
would of course nod to having this tapped a few weeks after
Starkbierfest's start in Munich... on April 1.
- --
DL Davidson, UVM Environ. Engineering, darryl.davidson at uvm.edu

Fill with mingled cream and amber, I will dram that glass again,
Such hilarious visions clamber, Through the chamber of my brain--
Quaintest thoughts--queerest fancies, Come to life and fade away;
Who cares how time advances? I am drinking ale today.


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