Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 00:01:03 -0400
Message-Id: <199807010401.AAA09469 at brew.oeonline.com>
To: judge at hbd.org
From: judge-request at hbd.org (Request Address Only - No Articles)
Reply-to: judge at hbd.org (Posting Address Only - No Requests)
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Subject: Beer Judge Digest #8 (July 01, 1998)


Beer Judge Digest #8		             Wed 01 July 1998


	FORUM ON BEER JUDGING AND RELATED ISSUES
		Digest Custodian: custodian at hbd.org
		Many thanks to the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers of 
		Livonia, Michigan for sponsoring the Beer Judge Digest.
				URL: http://www.oeonline.com


Contents:
  Points and Promotions (Russ Wigglesworth)
  backbiting ("Bryan L. Gros")
  Re: Current state of the BJCP (Kelly Jones)
  appearance/BJCP/checkboxes (Al Korzonas)


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


Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 08:45:56 -0700
From: Russ Wigglesworth <russ.wigglesworth at radiology.ucsf.edu>
Subject: Points and Promotions

Greg Lorton said:

> (What bugged
>me is that the May 15 BJCP letter said that the Judging Records should
>include all events prior to April '98, and then implied that if the record
>didn't, it's probably because of a DELINQUENT organizer.)

My mistake. Apparently I was not clear. What I intended to say was that I
was current on all reports that I had IN HAND at the end of March. And, I
should have specified the organizers I considered DELINQUENT were those
from 1997 events. Generally it can take about 2 months for points to show
up in the judge's files after an event is held. This is due to mailing
time, and my having time between processing exam results and competition
packets to record the reports.

Please accept this as a public apology to Greg (and any other organizer)
who's reputation I may have inadvertently smudged with my comments.

Promotions. After each annual mailing the recording of organizer reports
gets delayed several weeks due to the large influx of requests for
corrections and missing points. I am currently recovering from this deluge
and getting back on track with comp points and intend to pass along a list
of promotions for approval by the end of July. Those of you who expect to
be promoted should look for the new credentials at that time.

Those of you who have contacted me concerning missing points should have
gotten a reply telling you that I would check into the matter. If you did
not get such a reply you should re send your request just to be safe.

As I stated in the Annual Mailing, I am converting the database so that
multiple people can enter points. However I have not done so yet as I need
to be sure I can generate the necessary reports out of the database once I
make the modifications. As soon as the format is changed I will solicit
volunteers to assist with data entry.

RW...

Russ Wigglesworth - Program Administrator
Beer Judge Certification Program
PO Box 751271 - Petaluma CA 94975
707-769-0425 (h) 415-502-1070 (w)


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

Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 09:03:53 -0700
From: "Bryan L. Gros" <gros at bigfoot.com>
Subject: backbiting

I have personally enjoyed the debate and discussion about the BJCP on this
forum so far.  I don't think that critical comments or questions should
automatically be labeled "backbiting and whining."  As a BJCP member,
I have questions about the organization and this forum seems the 
perfect place to address those concerns.

Perhaps the BJCP, as an organization, doesn't respond to each question
because there is no "spokesperson" for the organization.  No one has
the position to respond "That's a good question; let me  contact the 
board and get back to you."  Perhaps this role is one that should be
created.

*******
I've finally used the new scoresheets while judging and I think they're
a big improvement.  I like the expanded range of scores and the 
reduced number of points for appearance.
And I'm really glad the AHA and BJCP have adopted the same
scoresheets for consistency.

  - Bryan

Bryan Gros	gros at bigfoot.com
Oakland, CA
Visit the new Draught Board homebrew website:
http://www.valhallabrewing.com/~thor/dboard/index.htm


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

Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 09:28:57 -0700
From: Kelly Jones <kejones at ptdcs2.ra.intel.com>
Subject: Re: Current state of the BJCP

Hi,

After my post yesterday on this subject (which I cc'd to BJCP President
Dennis Davison, and NW rep Alan Moen), I received the following reply
from Dennis.  I'm not sure whether either is a subscriber to the Digest,
but with Dennis's permission, I am posting his reply here:

> Kelly, this is the post I posted to the Judgenet that never was.

> Subject: The Latest Rumblings
> Date: Mon, 06 Apr 1998 23:08:56 -0500
> From: Dennis Davison <ddavison at execpc.com>
> Organization: BJCP
> To: BJCP BOARD <board at bjcp.org>, Judgenet <judge at synchro.com>
> 
> #1 Yes, Bill did graciously offer to help straighten matters out for the
> IRS forms. I took him up on the offer, but needed to get everything from
> the attorney in New York. After three weeks, I came to find the the info
> was sent to Russ in California. I asked Russ to forward it to me. There
> was unfortunately another 3 week delay in receiving it from Russ and
> within days of getting it, I got a message from Bill withdrawing his
> offer since he needed to work on his Boat for the summer.
> 
> Since that time, yes we do have an SS4 number and the bank account is in
> the name of the BJCP. A full accounting of last year will be included
> with the point updates .
> 
> #2 The ballots were late since the newsletter was late. We extended the
> time for nominations. We also corralled someone in the South, since
> Steve Daniels would run but would have preferred not to. Again, with the
> exception of the Northeast, the other areas of the country just don't
> seem interested in holding office. There is no election in the South or
> Northwest since there is only one candidate. This will also be explained
> in detail with the point updates which will also include information on
> the winner of the Northeast. Expect point updates just after May 1.
> 
> #3 Yes, it was my hope and others hopes that the newsletter would
> contain articles. George did offer to put a newsletter out but our Bulk
> Mail Permit is located in Ohio. I do have to ask the membership if
> anyone has ever submitted an article to be published? We're not looking
> for a 10 page manuscript, just a page or so.
> 
> #4 The Score sheet seems to have sparked a flurry of controversy.
> Comments like "what about an evaluation period" have raised the hair on
> my neck. Here we had almost a dozen people working on this project for
> over a year. This is what they came up with, and yes, there was
> controversy among them.  Judges in Germany don't score on color or head
> retention since color can influence a persons perception. This is the
> first major revamp of a score sheet in 7 years. Will it take seven years
> for another score sheet? No. Next year, we might have another. Will it
> be a major revamp? Probably not, it'll probably address some of the
> current concerns. So what's the problem? Resistance to change?
> Resistance to move the program forward? I for one must congratulate the
> score sheet committee for the fine work they have done.
> 
> Yes, we have opened up the lower end on scoring, but it's up to judges
> to open up the higher end themselves. Why not score that 38 point beer
> 40 points? Or that 42 point beer 44 points? What are we as judges afraid
> of? Not having enough points. If we used a 10 point scale most judging
> ranges would be from 2 to 8 points. People would afraid to give 8.5 or
> 9. If we shifted to a 100 point scale would we see 90 point beers? This
> is something we all must exam for ourselves. But again, why was there
> ever a lower limited assigned "don't score below 19"? We wanted to
> promote the hobby. Promoting homebrewing by giving scores of 10 doesn't
> happen. We would really appreciate people thinking before they give such
> a low score. Yes, we have all had beers that should score that low, but
> if the beer has some merit, be kind.
> 
> I can't wait until the new style sheets hit Judgenet. I can't wait for
> the complaints then either. But I know what the style sheet committee is
> doing and I for one appreciate there hard work also.
> 
> --
> Dennis Davison    mailto:ddavison at execpc.com
> 
>   BJCP Representative for the Midwest
>    BJCP President
> 
> http://www.bjcp.org

 
Kelly


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

Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 13:36:55 -0500 (CDT)
From: Al Korzonas <korz at xnet.com>
Subject: appearance/BJCP/checkboxes

This is a post that bounced when JudgeNet went down.

Curt writes:
>other judges, but suffice to say that I find the new sheets less than 
>ideal.  3 points is not enough for appearance & 12 points is too much 
>for aroma!  Think about it:  I submit a beer that is cloudy, badly 
>off color and has very little head.  With the new sheet, I can only 
>lose 3 points total (assuming that the beer smells and tastes okay).  

I too am on the Scoresheet Committee and I too am just speaking my
opinion and my take on the discussions that we had in coming up with
the new scoresheet.

I believe Curt makes a good point and we did consider it when we discussed
how many points to allow for each section.  I suggest that if the appearance
is terrible, the beer should get 0 in this section and I'm pretty sure
that it will lose points possibly in Flavour and certainly in the Overall
Impression section.  And if it really is a 12 in Aroma, 20 in Flavour,
5 in Mouthfeel and and 10 in OI, then the beer should get a 47, no?
If the beer is slightly hazy and perfect otherwise, what's wrong with
2 out of 3 in the Appearance section?

>And weighting the aroma to be worth more than overall impression 
>doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me either.

Recall that the aroma of any food is critical to how we perceive its
flavour.  The tongue can really only sense sweet, salty, sour and bitter
and if you loose your sense of smell, you can't tell lemon from lime
juice in a blind tasting.

>Were these changes made to the scoresheet according to requests or 
>concerns from brewers/judges?  I think the old sheets worked just 

I had heard from many judges that 6 points was far too much for Appearance.
I have personally judged in more than 40 competitions and I don't recall
a beer being significantly the wrong colour on more than 8 or 10 entries.
Most were amber Witbiers or Tripels... one was a Bitter which turned out
to have a pound of black patent in it!

When it came to distributing these three extra points, Aroma currently
had just over half as many points as Flavour, so we gave more points to
Aroma.  Incidentally, I had also heard from many judges that 5 points were
too many for Body.  We had considered decreasing the Body points, but
then the suggestion was made to include other "non-flavour" mouth
sensations in this section and rename it "Mouthfeel."  We even laboured
over the title of the section!  After expanding the role of the section,
we agreed that 5 points were now no longer excessive.

***
Bill writes:
>The bylaws state:
>Ballots, biographies and position statements are to be mailed by March 15
>to all Regular Members in good standing residing in the regions in which
>elections are being held.
>
>Unless the ballots were sent by pony express I have to assume that we are
>again not having an election. Certainly not a legal election.  I seem to

I have to agree with Bill here (yikes!).

>we have been working under.  In those bylaws we stated that we were to be a
>tax-exempt corporation.  Nothing has been filed with the IRS.  The BJCP
>does not even have a legal bank account, as the corporation under the fine
>leadership of Dennis Davidson has not seen fit to file a form SS-4 for a

I have a agree again... (that's definately a record).

>that as their most important goal.   If they don't then we will find out
>that over the past two years our board has done absolutely nothing,
>NOTHING.   

Ahh, now here I must disagree (that's better).

>Perhaps it is time to move forward.  Form a new Judging program.  Let the

If you wish, go ahead... you'll probably be much happier... but I'll stick
with the BJCP.

The BJCP officers are volunteers.  They have jobs and lives outside of
the BJCP and I don't blame them for things running a bit slowly.  I
do believe that if this is an election year, things are way behind
schedule and also that we should have applied for tax-exempt status, but
I don't think there should be talk of tossing a rope over a tree limb yet.

The most important things were that exams keep being administered and
scored (that was done) and that points continued to be entered into the
database (that was done).  I'm willing to be patient on the rest of
the stuff and I believe that a slightly more polite reminder would have
been far more appropriate.

***
George writes:
     1.  Appearance does need more than 3 points.  I hate dealing with 
     fractions, and if a beer has a slight haze, it shouldn't lose a full 
     third of the appearance score.  Any chef (and many brewers) will tell 
     you that presentation is a HUGE part of any dining (or drinking) 
     experience.  It deserves more than 3 points.
     
If the beer is downright unpleasant to look at, it will also affect your
Overall Impression of the beer, no?  To take your suggestion to an extreme
is to use a scoring like one book on beer I saw at the bookstore.  Of
the 5 points the author gives for the beers, fully TWO (!) are for
appearance.  Now *that's* excessive...

>     2.  I found the cutsie boxes where you are suposed to check off things 
>     like "intangibles" to be kind of unnecessary.  I just spent 5-8 minutes 
>     writing a small article about the beer; what more is gained by those 
>     little boxes?

Let my explain our rationalle.  Initially, my biggest complaints with
the old scorsheets were that the Scoring Guidelines only talked about
style and that many of the Descriptors were silly or wrong (e.g. "Husky/Grainy
 -- see Astringent" or "Metallic... Check your brewpot and bottlecaps").

We initially began solving the issue of the Scoring Guidlines by removing
the definitions of the various categories ("Excellent," "Good,"...) and then
someone suggested that we break out the areas in which there could be problems
into "Stylistic" and "Technical" errors so a judge could let the entrant
know where their beer had problems (this was the reason for the Scoring
Guideline and we were taking away that information).  We then noted that
some beers can score quite highly in Style and Technical Merit, yet be
lacking in "Wonderfulness."  It could be a technically perfect beer that
fell smack dab in the middle of the style guideline and yet was not 50-point
beer.  If we check the highest boxes in Style and Technical Merit, how
do we justify not giving a 50?  Born was the "Intangibles" line of
checkboxes.

>     In fact, the little boxes take up valuable space that I think should 
>     be devoted to the "check off the flaws" boxes.  They are very useful.  
>     They are an easy way to provide quick, accurate advice on how to fix 
>     common brewing maladies.

Alas, there isn't enough room for accurate advice on how to fix most of
the problems.  That's  the job of books.  We discussed the purposes for
the "Descriptors" as they are called and decided that they should be
limited to serving two purposes:

1. to define aromas and flavours for entrants who may not be familiar with
(for example) "Acetaldehyde," "Astringent" or "Diacetyl," and

2. as a memory-jogger for the judges.

Before the scoresheets become official, I'm quite certain that they will
be sent to all judges in a newsletter along with guidelines for their use.
I believe that if we include the resoning behind the changes in this
newsletter, judges will be more willing to accept them.  We really did spend
a lot of time debating every aspect of the sheets.

Al.

Al Korzonas, Palos Hills, IL
http://www.brewinfo.com/brewinfo/


------------------------------
End of Beer Judge Digest #8, 07/01/98
*************************************
-------