Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 00:01:04 -0400
Message-Id: <199807110401.AAA20646 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)
Errors-to: judge-request at hbd.org
Precedence: bulk
Subject: Beer Judge Digest #17 (July 11, 1998)


Beer Judge Digest #17		             Sat 11 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:
  'Out of Style' winning beers? (STEPHEN G STROUD)
  style certification, sorting styles ("Bryan L. Gros")
  comments on comments (Dave Sapsis)
  Re: Out of Style Beers Doing Well in Competition and other (Bill Giffin)


Send articles for __publication_only__ to judge at hbd.org
  (Articles are published in the order they are received.) 

If your e-mail account is being deleted, please unsubscribe first!!

To SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE send an e-mail message with the word
  "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" to judge-request at hbd.org. 
**SUBSCRIBE AND UNSUBSCRIBE REQUESTS MUST BE SENT FROM THE E-MAIL
**ACCOUNT YOU WISH TO HAVE SUBSCRIBED OR UNSUBSCRIBED!!! 
IF YOU HAVE SPAM-PROOFED your e-mail address, the autoresponder and
  the SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE commands will fail!

YOU MUST BE A BEER JUDGE OR BE REFERRED BY ONE TO SUBSCRIBE!!! 
You MUST be a subscriber in order to post articles!!! 

Requests for back issues will be ignored. 

CUSTODIANS on duty: Pat Babcock and Karl Lutzen (custodian at hbd.org)

              "Not a publication of the BJCP"


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


Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 09:30:32 -0400
From: STROUDS at POLAROID.COM (STEPHEN G STROUD)
Subject: 'Out of Style' winning beers?

In JudgeDigest #15, Bill Giffin wrote:


>  The AHA NHC is the only competition where we can all get some idea 
>  what the winning beer was like through the recipe.  Yet if you 
>  evaluate the winning recipes you will see that the MAJORITY of the 
>  winning recipes were out of style.  Many of them exceeded the 
>  original gravity for the style, while many were over hopped, and 
>  finally a goodly number of the winning beers used inappropriate 
>  ingredients.


The emphasis on the word majority is mine - but I have seen Bill take this
stance many times and it has me wondering how true it is.  A quick look at the
1995 winners (the only Special Issue of Zymurgy that I have close at hand) shows
that only 5 of the beers had an OG over the AHA limits and only one of them was
wildly too high (three of the 'offenders' were within two points of the limit). 

Bill, based on your statement I will assume that you have done an analysis of
all of the winning beers at recent AHA NHComps based on published Zymurgy
recipes.  There are 24 beer categories for the AHA.  Please post for the 1st
place beers in 1997 how many were out of style due to:

1) too high or too low an OG
2) too many IBU's
3) use of inappropriate ingredients

and which ones were they?

If you have analyses of earlier AHA NHComps I would like to see the numbers for
those also.

Thank you,
Steve


**********
work: strouds at polaroid.com
home: strouds at gis.net
**********


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

Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 11:26:50 -0700
From: "Bryan L. Gros" <gros at bigfoot.com>
Subject: style certification, sorting styles

Dave Houseman aptly writes:
>Bruce again suggests style certification.  There's not much argument
>that it would be a good idea, but the issue is "how?"

Perhaps as a start, styles would be grouped together.  I would imaging
most judges who brew beer, drink beer, and judge beer would be good
judges for "common styles", like Amer. Pale Ale, Porter, Stout, and IPA.
And we all have our favorites, which we concentrate on.  But, at least
for me, judging styles other than these can be very difficult.  I can
take the style guidelines and what I remember from Jackson and give 
it a shot if needed, but it isn't ideal.

I enjoy a lambic or belgian ale occasionally, but I don't have nearly
the experience to properly judge these categories.  Definately true
for meads and ciders.  I do okay with English ales, since most
competition entries are bitters, but I have no experience with 
commercial milds (pale or dark), or even English style porters 
and IPAs.  I've never been to Koln or Dusseldorf.

Many competition organizers ask judges what they prefer to
judge, so the idea of "style category certification" may start off
as just a formal way of asking judges what are you good at and
what are you not good at.  In the future, maybe the BJCP would keep
track of these self categorizations, and ultimately, a formal way
of certifying judges may develop.

****************
Gregory Lorton writes
>While I agree in concept with Russ' point that the BJCP guidelines
>shouldn't be the "sole format for determining categories for competitions",
>there are many cases where competition organizers would like that sole
>format.  While creativity is appreciated and to be valued, coming up with a
>special set of categories requires careful planning and consideration
>months in advance of the competition.  If you're going to include some
>unusual category, you need to give brewers enough time to brew it.  While
>it may be easy for a competition focusing on unusual styles or categories
>to develop a special set of categories, for the "general purpose"
>competition, it's a lot easier to say, "We'll be using the 1998 BJCP (or
>AHA) Style Guidelines."
>...
>With those considerations in mind, and as a prospective organizer of a big
>contest next March, I'm inclined to go with a standard set of guidelines. 

I'm not sure if you missed the point or not.
As the orgainzer, you need to decide how big of a competition you would like.
This involves, among other things, trying to anticipate how many entries
you will get, and how many prizes you will award.  (This is the hard part
of being an organizer).  "Categories" are generally styles grouped 
together for purposes of awarding prizes.  The AHA has apparently 
decided it will award 24 sets of prizes, so they have sorted all
the beer styles into 24 categories for this purpose.

If you want to award prizes in fifteen categories, you'll need to order
fifteen sets of ribbons.  Now, you need to decide how you will sort your
entries into fifteen "categories".  So you look at all the styles possible
and the potential pool of judges you have and decide which BJCP styles
your competition will accept and which styles (if any) you won't accept.

Maybe you'll decide to go not accept Kolsch and Altbiers, since 
hardly anyone enters those categories.  Or maybe those are popular
styles, so you combine them together into a category.  Or 
maybe you want to accept all entries in your competition, so you
combine Kolsch, Altbier, Steam beer and Cream ale into a single
category.

The style guidelines exist to help the brewers brew and the
judges judge.  A competition organizer still needs to organize his
or her competition and sort the entries accordingly.


  - 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: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 13:36:18 -0700
From: Dave Sapsis <DAVE_SAPSIS at fire.ca.gov>
Subject: comments on comments

Just to expand on what George said regarding appropriate types of
comments:  any feedback needs to be based on percieved and communicated
aromas, textures, and flavors.  These need to be as detailed as
possible.  "Infected" is *not* a flavor.  Feedback can be tricky because
you really have no (or at least shouldn't) factual knowledge of how the
beer was made.  Thus, you must not be presumptive of things you are not
sure of.  The most important thing is to clearly describe what you
sense.  Then appropriate feedback offers general sources for these
things that have been clearly identified on the sheet.  

I find it helpful to assume that the brewer may in fact be very
knowledgeable --this avoids being ovelry critical, pompous, and mean.
Far too often I see judges dismissing beers, wily nilly, for some
perceived fault or another, when in practice they drink beers of similar
class all the time and enjoy them fully.  It as if the fact that they
are sanctioned beer judges puts them up on high, from which, like kings
of old, can cast their will about any way they see fit.  I see my
obligation as a judge clearly: to make a fair, knowleged, and
independent appraisal, where I compare percieved vs. expected, and offer
sound, but unpresuming advice on how to bridge the gap.  Passing the
test does not make you a good judge.  Like brewing, judging is a human
enterprise, and requires dilligence to make right.

cheers,
- --dave, sacramento, ca


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

Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 17:11:59 -0400
From: Bill Giffin <billg at ctel.net>
Subject: Re: Out of Style Beers Doing Well in Competition and other

Re: Out of Style Beers Doing Well in Competition and other things

Top of the morning to yea all,

The BOS beer was just wonderful.  Flawed in no way, it just was not to
style.  There was at least four other first place beers which were better
examples of their styles then the winning beer.  An out of style beer was
selected as BOS. The question is how do we educate our judge so they have
better knowledge in styles and can recognize a beer as to its style.

A master judge quite often is the lead judge on a panel of judges and as
such can have quite an influence on the panel.  If our master judges are
competent then they should at lest recognize when a beer is out of the
style that it was entered in and not allow this out of style beer to win.
If this means not awarding a ribbon in a category so be it.

As to style certification this will take some time to accomplish.  If we
don't do a better job of judging the various style of beer we are going
lose in many way.  

Dave Houseman said:
"To be a master judge it's not just which beers we've judged on the exam
that counts.  Having judged in 50+ competitions represents tasting MANY
homebrews; I feel I've judged quite a bit more than 4-12."

You were only evaluated on 4-12.  Without peer review there is no way to
determine how good or bad for that matter our judges are judging beer.   If
you have entered any number beers into competitions you have received score
sheets that just were not adequate and frequently out right wrong.  There
is nothing that says just because you judge a lot of competitions, you are
a great judge or suitable to be a master judge.  

If you can't tell that a recipe is out of style based on the recipe then
you are not much of a brewer.  I say again that the majority of the winning
beers at the AHA NHC were out of style based on their recipes.  Perhaps too
many judges have used these recipes and their perception of a style has
been determined by a poor example of the style.

George writes:
"The example of the veggie CAP is a real one; a master judge wrote that 
     my CAP was infected at a contest back in February.  Being the brewer, 
     I know it wasn't (and the beer went on to be scored in the mid-high 
     30's in later contests - I love redemption!)."

Just another example of no matter who the judge is we don't always get it
right.  

We still need judge evaluation and style certification.

Bill


------------------------------
End of Beer Judge Digest #17, 07/11/98
*************************************
-------