Return-Path: owner-judge at synchro.com Received: from srvr8.engin.umich.edu (root at srvr8.engin.umich.edu [141.212.2.81]) by srvr5.engin.umich.edu (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id BAA01943 for ; Tue, 7 Jan 1997 01:34:53 -0500 (EST) Received: from judgmentday.rs.itd.umich.edu (judgmentday.rs.itd.umich.edu [141.211.83.37]) by srvr8.engin.umich.edu (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id BAA21848 for ; Tue, 7 Jan 1997 01:34:52 -0500 (EST) Received: by judgmentday.rs.itd.umich.edu (8.7.5/2.2) with X.500 id BAA02175; Tue, 7 Jan 1997 01:34:52 -0500 (EST) Received: from relay2.smtp.psi.net by judgmentday.rs.itd.umich.edu (8.7.5/2.2) with SMTP id BAA02171; Tue, 7 Jan 1997 01:34:50 -0500 (EST) Received: from uu6.psi.com by relay2.smtp.psi.net (8.6.12/SMI-5.4-PSI) id BAA27784; Tue, 7 Jan 1997 01:34:44 -0500 Received: by uu6.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINet) via UUCP; id AA08036 for thomaar at texaco.com; Tue, 7 Jan 97 01:34:42 -0500 Received: (from majordom at localhost) by synchro.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id BAA01308 for judge-digest-outgoing; Tue, 7 Jan 1997 01:02:07 -0500 Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 01:02:07 -0500 Message-Id: <199701070602.BAA01308 at synchro.com> From: owner-judge-digest at synchro.com To: judge-digest at synchro.com Subject: judge-digest V1 #1364 Reply-To: judge at synchro.com Errors-To: owner-judge-digest at synchro.com Precedence: bulk judge-digest Tuesday, 7 January 1997 Volume 01 : Number 1364 ============================================================================ J u d g e N e t - t h e b e e r j u d g e d i g e s t ============================================================================ Moderator: Chuck Cox Archivist: Spencer Thomas Publisher: SynchroSystems Submissions: judge at synchro.com Administration: judge-request at synchro.com Archive: http://realbeer.com/spencer/judge BJCP info: geninfo at bjcp.synchro.com ============================================================================ contents: RE: Another Pro competition Commercial Competitions ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: George_De_Piro at berlex.com (George De Piro) Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 08:05:10 -0800 Subject: RE: Another Pro competition Hi all! David Houseman suggests another professional competition because of problems with the GABF. Isn't that what the WBC was supposed to do? Professional competitions are very different from homebrew contests: the results can actually make money for somebody! They are marketing tools. If there are too many competitions, they will become more meaningless than they already are. Consumers will be inundated with beer labels claiming medals at competitions. Sure, it would be fun to judge at an east coast professional competition, but I don't think it's what the beer world needs. Just my opinion, obviously. Have fun! George De Piro (Nyack, NY) ------------------------------ From: "Martin Lodahl" Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 17:47:28 -0800 Subject: Commercial Competitions In Volume 01 : Number 1363, Dave Houseman said: > I've received comments from a couple micro/brewpub brewers who have > problems with the GABF for various reasons and therefore do not enter. > I seem to recall a number of comments here or HBD that were negative as > well. This seemed to suggest that there might be room for an additional > competition managed as a well run home-brew competition ... You bet! > ... to the same > rules, procedures and using the same AHA/BJCP style definitions as > home-brewer competition. There, I think we may have a bit of a problem. > ... Only this competition would be open to only > professional brewers (who we normally exclude). Same 3-bottle/entry, > BJCP judges ... Sounds good! > ... we return feedback to the brewers. No, I don't think you want to do that. > ... BJCP Sanctioned. I'm all for it. > ... Hold > in the Spring and on the East Coast to balance the GABF held in the Fall > in Colorado. While the BJCP is normally involved with just homebrewers, > many homebrewers and judges go on to make their advocation their > vocation. This could be a service we could provide to the micro/brewpub > community by providing knowledgeable and timely feedback. Any comments > or interest? You bet. This is one of the hottest potato(e)s in beer judging today. The California State Fair has run a commercial competition for the last two years, and a lot of what I say is an outgrowth of the experience we've had with that competition. First, most of the differences between homebrew and commercial competitions are due to the difference in context between the two. They're based on different sets of assumptions and have different functions. Though as judges we too often forget it, the primary reason for a homebrew competition is to help the competitors grow as brewers. That's why there are specific style descriptors that they're expected to meet (even if those descriptors don't correspond exactly to the commercial beers of that style), and why the judges are emphasizing tight conformance to that style descriptor. A commercial competition, on the other hand, is to improve overall excellence in brewing by recognizing the best manifestations of that excellence, and assumes that the brewers already have all the information they need about brewing and about their beer. They're entering not for any feedback they may get, but in hopes of winning an award they can use in their marketing. The conformation to externally-defined stylistic descriptors that's a key part of homebrew judging, therefore, is not only not valuable in commercial competition; it's not even particularly relevant. In a commercial competition, the beers that win the top awards should be the ones with the extra spark, the beers that every judge wanted to know what it was, so they could buy some. Where styles fit into it, in my opinion (context: in addition to years of judging, I do the Styles column for Brewing Techniques and have written styles-related articles for a number of other publications), is in a much more general sense: does this beer correspond to the generally understood idea of the style it claims to represent, or is it something else, something far enough removed to disappoint a customer? I'm never likely to give a very good score to a golden-blonde "stout," but on the other hand, I may be willing to entertain an "Alt" with obvious American hops and crystal-malt sweetness, if it convinces me that it's a truly outstanding beer. The feedback issue is more down-to-earth, but results from the same context difference. Here, we're talking about people's jobs and reputations. Most of us have at some time had "man from Mars" judge comments. In a homebrew competition, you shrug it off. But if a commercial beer is most heartily slammed by the judges, it could cost some brewer his job, and most certainly will lead to some world-class whining by breweries trying to intimidate contest organizers by challenging everything they can. Because judges are human, there is simply no way for the organizers to get anything but abuse out of such arguments; stay out of them by not committing yourself to comments that aren't wanted in the first place. There are some non-obvious rules you'll have to have in place that don't apply to homebrew competitions, too. The first is that _only_ the brewery may enter. Open it to distributors, and suddenly you have the same beer entered five times in one class, giving that brewer an unfair advantage. Limiting a specific beer to a single entry without specifying that it must come from the brewery can penalize the brewers, if a distributor enters an abused sample before the brewery can get a fresh one in. But however you do it, you have to expect that every brewer who loses will challenge the judging and the organization of the competition, because the only thing they wanted was the ribbon they didn't get. In a homebrew competition, we get usable feedback, which takes a lot of the sting out of going home empty handed. And the form the attack will most commonly take is an amazing form of snobbery based on income source. Anyone who's tasted more than a handful of commercial beers knows that not all commercial brewers are gifted. Here in California there are some very good breweries, but there are an embarrassing number of them exploring the territory between "uninspiring" and "shockingly awful." I'm sorry, but a brewer producing bad beer is simply in no position to put on airs about his judging ability, yet there is a very strong trend within the industry to feel that only people who earn all of their living in the beer industry are in any way qualified to judge commercial beer. This is logrolling at its very worst, and is without parallel in other industries, where products are made for customers and not for other producers. There (theoretically) may have been some justification for such an attitude once, when few _really_ knew about beer and most who did were in the industry somewhere, but that hasn't been the situation for a long, long time. I do go on. My point is that there is no reason why BJCP judges shouldn't do commercial competitions and they'll do them at least as well as others do, but it must be understood from the beginning that it's a very different animal. - Martin - -- Martin Lodahl of Auburn, California lodahl at foothill.net Beer Brewer, Judge and Writer Winner of the Quill & Tankard Award ------------------------------ End of judge-digest V1 #1364 **************************** Send subscription cancellations & changes to judge-request at synchro.com. Messages sent to the wrong address will be ignored.