Return-Path: judge-owner at synchro.com Received: from srvr22.engin.umich.edu (root at srvr22.engin.umich.edu [141.212.2.35]) by srvr5.engin.umich.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id EAA21893 for ; Fri, 7 Aug 1998 04:15:03 -0400 (EDT) Received: from synchro.com (cccox.ne.mediaone.net [24.128.144.90]) by srvr22.engin.umich.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id EAA11317 for ; Fri, 7 Aug 1998 04:14:56 -0400 (EDT) From: "JudgeNet - the beer judge digest" To: "Digest Recipients" Reply-To: "JudgeNet - the beer judge digest" Subject: Digest for the period 8/6/98 - 8/7/98 Message-ID: Date: Fri, 07 Aug 1998 02:04:18 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Hops: 1 Table of contents ------------------------------------------------------ Fill levels / bottle inspection / chlorophenols (George_De_Piro at berlex.com) Bottle inspection/Fill levels, calibrating (Some Guy) Calibration & Bottle inspection (Spencer W Thomas) Commercial Examples in Judging (Shortell, Joanne) Chlorophenols (Houseman, David L) fill or full (Dave Sapsis) Re: Calibration & Bottle inspection (Charley Burns) Bottles (Bob McCracken) -------------------------------------------------------- From: George_De_Piro at berlex.com Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 08:35:40 -0700 Subject: Fill levels / bottle inspection / chlorophenols Hi all, Dan writes about fill levels: "If the bottle is too full, there's no room for hop/malt aromatics to congregate to be released with the opening of the cap, along with the swirly CO2 steam." The fill level of the bottle does not effect the release of aromatics from the beer. Dan also says: "Your standard 12 oz. long necked brown glass bottle (I'm looking at Russian River Amber Ale right now) measures about eleven-sixteenths inch (11/16 in. or 0.6875 in.)." Why is it that commercial beers have head space? It's NOT because it is necessary to proper carbonation or release of aromatics. It's because filling equipment is designed to minimize air in the head space. This is accomplished by shooting a small jet of sterile water into the beer just prior to closure. This causes the beer to foam, which pushes the air out of the bottle (leaving headspace). The other reason for commercial brewers leaving headspace in the bottle is so that the consumer does not wet themselves when opening the bottle. If they elected to minimize headspace air by filling nearly to the rim, people would have to be very careful about opening their beverage! As homebrewers one way to minimize headspace air is to minimize headspace. Of course, the bottle cannot be filled completely (water is not very compressible so temperature changes could burst the bottle), but it can be filled pretty high. When C-P bottling I usually get a bit of foaming before closure, and that (plus the volume of the fill tube) determine the headspace left in my bottles. Louis Bonham and I are working on a little experiment to debunk (or confirm) the idea that headspace effects the carbonation level of bottle conditioned beer. Results will hopefully be coming soon... --------------------------- WRT bottle inspections: I agree with those who would prefer to not see the bottle. Appearances can strongly (and unfairly) color your evaluation of the beer. Professional taste panels often use opaque glasses so that the appearance of the beer cannot effect their evaluation of aroma and flavor. I'm not suggesting we do that, but I think it is important for us to be consciously objective. --------------------------- Jeremy asks about the level of ortho-chloro-phenol used at Siebel. It was detectable (by me) at levels as low as 8 ppb. Nasty stuff at that level. I don't know if bleach will react with Bud to make chlorophenols. They do smell somewhat bleach-like to me, so it may even be difficult to tell the difference between the bleach aroma and ortho-chloro-phenol. Have fun! George De Piro (Nyack, NY) -------------------------------------------------------- From: Some Guy Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 06:16:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Bottle inspection/Fill levels, calibrating On bottle inspection/fill levels... One competition I judged, had I simply been given a glass of beer, I would not have been able to advise the brewer to use a brush and/or jet washer to clean his bottles prior to filling in order to avoid the incredible rope of snot that ened up in my glass. Had I simply been given a glass of beer, I would have had to choose between giving the advice to the brewer or suggesting a Kleenex for the steward. (Oddly, the beer was otherwise excellent and scored pretty well considering. Bottle inspection falls into one of those categories that express the appeal of the brew as a "product". After all: competing pits your abilities to duplicate a style against others, usually using a commercial example as a yardstick. Part of the commercial example's appeal is always the presentation. If this weren't true, all bottles would be the same shape and color, and we would not have the plethora of beer glass styles out there. You'd be given generic beer in a generic bottle or in a generic glass. If you gave your buddy a bottle of your brew to taste (the ultimate competition: do your chums like your beer) and it had a rope of hog-snot in it, I don't think he'd like it very much. On fill levels... I personally don't pay particular attention to fill level (unless the beer was really good and a "proper" fill would have provided me more :-) I've not done any experimentation on bottle-induced oxidation, but I'm doubtful that the tiny airspace above the conditioning brew can be that large a source of oxidative damage. (I believe Algis should be able to comment on this after having performed that experiment on fill level vs carbonation a while back. Al: were the low-fill bottles oxidized?) FWIW, I think "avoid sources of oxidation" is more valid than "fill the bottle higher" when oxidized brews are encountered. Hell! How do you know they aren't CO2 purging first? Kind of makes a monkey out of you. And comments like "Nice fill level" are really quite inane. I have had stellar beers in half full-bottles, and oxidized plant-food beers in "fill-level poster child" bottles. On calibrating... Wow! It would be EXCELLENT, I think, if the first round of every flight was a commercial example or accepted calibrator. And that brew should be kept at table for comparison purposes. I like that idea! Could help quell some of the "that judge didn't have a clue..." comments prevalent in recent competitions. Wow. At least all the judges at table would be on the same page. See ya! Pat Babcock in SE Michigan pbabcock at oeonline.com Home Brew Digest Janitor janitor at hbd.org HBD Web Site http://hbd.org The Home Brew Page http://oeonline.com/~pbabcock/brew.html "Just a cyber-shadow of his former brewing self..." -------------------------------------------------------- From: Spencer W Thomas Date: Thu, 06 Aug 1998 10:42:23 -0400 Subject: Calibration & Bottle inspection Charley Burns wants to calibrate on the style for the flight. Not a bad idea, but... To take an extreme example, suppose you're judging "Belgian Ales." Should you calibrate with a triple, a double, a wit, or maybe a lambic (assuming lambics have been collapsed with the other Belgians for the competition)? Even "simple" styles such as "stout" are problematic in this respect -- is the calibrator a dry stout, an imperial stout, or something in between? And what if the "excellent example" that the organizer buys happens to be mishandled in shipping? For example, I would never suggest using Pilsner Urquel as a calibrator, because almost every bottle I get is skunked. Heck, I've even had "faded" bottles of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. It is the organizer's responsibility to put at least one judge on each flight who has some familiarity with the style, and it is the judges' responsibility to tell the organizer the styles that they have no clue about. Charley, I'm curious why you learned nothing from your "Wit" judging experience, especially if there were four "experts" at the table. It sounds like they failed in their responsibility to educate you about the style and what they were or weren't tasting in the beer. And what competition was it that could devote a whole flight to wit beers with 5 judges? Our largest local competition folds all the Belgians together and we can usually only afford to put 2 judges per table as it is. ---------------- Carl Saxer writes: CL> Many times I have seen judges' objectivity of beer they were CL> about to judge swayed by what they perceived to be an CL> inapproprate fill level, or a neck ring. I'm sorry. This is not a reason for removing the bottle inspection section on the form. This is a fault in those judges, and one that they should work on correcting, and that any judges working with them should work on discouraging. Whether or not there is a section on the form for "bottle inspection," judges are going to look at the bottle. Those who think a neck ring automatically means the beer is infected will still think so, regardless of whether they have a blank to write someting down in. The right answer is JUDGE EDUCATION! Scott's suggestion of having the steward pour the beer into a pitcher is about the only way to avoid bottle-induced bias. Of course, the "double pour" would affect head and reduce the initial aroma in the glass. =Spencer Thomas in Ann Arbor, MI (spencer at umich.edu) -------------------------------------------------------- From: Shortell, Joanne Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 09:16:50 -0400 Subject: Commercial Examples in Judging Gregory A. Lorton recently posted the following in the context of judging Belgian Wits, a style with which he was not familiar: "But as a precursor to judging, why not get us started with an excellent example of what the style is SUPPOSED to taste, smell, look, feel like?" One problem with his idea is the poor quality of many imported beers. So many are old, oxidized, etc., that it would be difficult to ensure that they did represent the style. I love Belgian Wits and drank them almost every day during a trip to Belgium. I rarely buy them here and when I do I'm usually disappointed. If I entered a Belgian Wit in a contest, I wouldn't want a novice judge thinking that the style is supposed to be as bland as many commercial examples are by the time we buy them. -------------------------------------------------------- From: Houseman, David L Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 11:00:52 -0400 Subject: Chlorophenols Byron Gros asks "Are chlorophenols really that rare a problem?" In judging around the country, I've found that this is one of the leading technical flaws in homebrews, particuarly those that may have come from beginners (and education problem). Regionally perhaps the level of chlorine in water is higher in some areas of the country than others. I know that where my sister lives there's so much chlorine in the water that her coffee from Mr Coffee was very chlorophenolic and when I suggested she switch to bottled water, there was a remarkable improvement in the coffee; I only imagine what the homebrew there is like if the brewers aren't preboiling, filtering or using bottled water. I don't find that chlorophenols are all that rare, just the opposite. At least it provides the opportunity for very specific feedback to the brewer! Dave Houseman -------------------------------------------------------- From: Dave Sapsis Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 09:00:45 -0700 Subject: fill or full Dan, I love you too: "Little things. Esthetics." The latest digest actually presents the quandry associated with bottle inspection quite well. On the one hand, based on visual observations of the bottle we may be able to identify sources for percieved flaws; on the other hand we may also significantly bias our impressions based on observations that have nothing to do with the process of percpetion that are the basis for scoring, comments, feedback. Taken to the limit, we have the judge who refuses to sample a beer with a neck ring. Personally, my experience has been that bottle observations trigger bias in people, thus put me in the camp with Scott. If a bottle is half full (but never seen by the judges) and renderes a highly oxidized beer -- wouldn't comments suggesting things like "stale, musty, wet-paper characterisitcs indicate oxygen pick-up -- watch out for oxygentating hot wort and post-ferment beer, particularly during packaging" works sufficiently? Now whether the esthetic appearance of the *bottle* merits consideration, maybe to some. For me its what's in the glass that counts. Peace. --dave dave_sapsis at fire.ca.gov -------------------------------------------------------- From: Charley Burns Date: Thu, 6 Aug 98 08:53 PDT Subject: Re: Calibration & Bottle inspection At 10:42 AM 8/6/98 -0400, Spencer W Thomas wrote: >Charley Burns wants to calibrate on the style for the flight. > >Not a bad idea, but... > >To take an extreme example, suppose you're judging "Belgian Ales." >Should you calibrate with a triple, a double, a wit, or maybe a lambic >(assuming lambics have been collapsed with the other Belgians for the >competition)? > >Even "simple" styles such as "stout" are problematic in this respect >-- is the calibrator a dry stout, an imperial stout, or something in >between? A plausible argument, but... We could still recalibrate between substyles. Admittedly this would cause more beer drinking than we need during judging, and cost more money if we used commercial examples. It just seems that since there are so many novice judges (many times 2 out of 3 on a panel) that it would just help a **lot** to have excellent examples on hand. >And what if the "excellent example" that the organizer buys happens to >be mishandled in shipping? For example, I would never suggest using >Pilsner Urquel as a calibrator, because almost every bottle I get is >skunked. Heck, I've even had "faded" bottles of Sierra Nevada Pale >Ale. No, its not a perfect world, and in that case it would be the *experienced* judge's responsibility to point out what happened and just be another bad beer to evaluate. But at least we would have tried to set a good example. In terms of PU - I have had similar experiences with that stuff. But, based on reading that the skunkiness can fade, I have also stored PU in my fridge at home for 6 months (cold and dark) and indeed come up with a great beer with no skunking. Takes a lot of planning, but its possible. > >Charley, I'm curious why you learned nothing from your "Wit" judging >experience, especially if there were four "experts" at the table. It >sounds like they failed in their responsibility to educate you about >the style and what they were or weren't tasting in the beer. And what >competition was it that could devote a whole flight to wit beers with >5 judges? Our largest local competition folds all the Belgians >together and we can usually only afford to put 2 judges per table as >it is. Well, I was too strong when I said "...learned nothing". Exaggerating to make a point I guess. At the outset I remember saying something like "OK, what's a Wit supposed to taste like". At that point I think it was Martin Lodahl that launched into a 5-10 minute dissertation on Belgian Wit. I took notes. It may not have been Martin, but it was someone with a similar beard that knew an awful lot about beer. It was the preliminary round of the California State Fair, March 1997 (almost a year and half ago). We did only 3 styles that evening, Belgian Wheat/Lambic, Belgian Strongs and Pale Ales (stretching memory limits here). There were a BUNCH of judges that showed up. Charley -------------------------------------------------------- From: Bob McCracken Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 13:57:04 -0400 Subject: Bottles >>Personally I would like to see this section on the score sheet disappea= r. As a judge, I would rather not even see the bottle. For a truly blind tasting, just give me a glass of beer with an entry number.... I think quibbling over fill levels is especially assinine. That's my opinion, anyway. I would welcome other opinions. Scott Birdwell (Master judge)<<= Ditto, and I've always wondered about those people who bring flashlights = to contests to inspect the bottles... A ring may or may not be a sign of infection, a high or low level may or may not be a sign of proper carbonation. But it's the beer in the glass y= ou are judging, not the recipe, or the brewer, or the bottle. As to comments relating to the bottle, frankly they are pretty rare, unle= ss the beer is problematic. One reason I do like to have the bottle is so I can gauge the temperature= of the beer. We seem to have had a spate of over chilled beers in the contests I have judged lately, and by being able to feel the bottle beforehand, we have been able to warm them up sufficiently to taste them more correctly. Bob Portland, Oregon 06-Aug-98 Return-Path: judge-owner at synchro.com Received: from srvr22.engin.umich.edu (root at srvr22.engin.umich.edu [141.212.2.35]) by srvr5.engin.umich.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id EAA21893 for ; Fri, 7 Aug 1998 04:15:03 -0400 (EDT) Received: from synchro.com (cccox.ne.mediaone.net [24.128.144.90]) by srvr22.engin.umich.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id EAA11317 for ; Fri, 7 Aug 1998 04:14:56 -0400 (EDT) From: "JudgeNet - the beer judge digest" To: "Digest Recipients" Reply-To: "JudgeNet - the beer judge digest" Subject: Digest for the period 8/6/98 - 8/7/98 Message-ID: Date: Fri, 07 Aug 1998 02:04:18 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Hops: 1 Table of contents ------------------------------------------------------ Fill levels / bottle inspection / chlorophenols (George_De_Piro at berlex.com) Bottle inspection/Fill levels, calibrating (Some Guy) Calibration & Bottle inspection (Spencer W Thomas) Commercial Examples in Judging (Shortell, Joanne) Chlorophenols (Houseman, David L) fill or full (Dave Sapsis) Re: Calibration & Bottle inspection (Charley Burns) Bottles (Bob McCracken) -------------------------------------------------------- From: George_De_Piro at berlex.com Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 08:35:40 -0700 Subject: Fill levels / bottle inspection / chlorophenols Hi all, Dan writes about fill levels: "If the bottle is too full, there's no room for hop/malt aromatics to congregate to be released with the opening of the cap, along with the swirly CO2 steam." The fill level of the bottle does not effect the release of aromatics from the beer. Dan also says: "Your standard 12 oz. long necked brown glass bottle (I'm looking at Russian River Amber Ale right now) measures about eleven-sixteenths inch (11/16 in. or 0.6875 in.)." Why is it that commercial beers have head space? It's NOT because it is necessary to proper carbonation or release of aromatics. It's because filling equipment is designed to minimize air in the head space. This is accomplished by shooting a small jet of sterile water into the beer just prior to closure. This causes the beer to foam, which pushes the air out of the bottle (leaving headspace). The other reason for commercial brewers leaving headspace in the bottle is so that the consumer does not wet themselves when opening the bottle. If they elected to minimize headspace air by filling nearly to the rim, people would have to be very careful about opening their beverage! As homebrewers one way to minimize headspace air is to minimize headspace. Of course, the bottle cannot be filled completely (water is not very compressible so temperature changes could burst the bottle), but it can be filled pretty high. When C-P bottling I usually get a bit of foaming before closure, and that (plus the volume of the fill tube) determine the headspace left in my bottles. Louis Bonham and I are working on a little experiment to debunk (or confirm) the idea that headspace effects the carbonation level of bottle conditioned beer. Results will hopefully be coming soon... --------------------------- WRT bottle inspections: I agree with those who would prefer to not see the bottle. Appearances can strongly (and unfairly) color your evaluation of the beer. Professional taste panels often use opaque glasses so that the appearance of the beer cannot effect their evaluation of aroma and flavor. I'm not suggesting we do that, but I think it is important for us to be consciously objective. --------------------------- Jeremy asks about the level of ortho-chloro-phenol used at Siebel. It was detectable (by me) at levels as low as 8 ppb. Nasty stuff at that level. I don't know if bleach will react with Bud to make chlorophenols. They do smell somewhat bleach-like to me, so it may even be difficult to tell the difference between the bleach aroma and ortho-chloro-phenol. Have fun! George De Piro (Nyack, NY) -------------------------------------------------------- From: Some Guy Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 06:16:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Bottle inspection/Fill levels, calibrating On bottle inspection/fill levels... One competition I judged, had I simply been given a glass of beer, I would not have been able to advise the brewer to use a brush and/or jet washer to clean his bottles prior to filling in order to avoid the incredible rope of snot that ened up in my glass. Had I simply been given a glass of beer, I would have had to choose between giving the advice to the brewer or suggesting a Kleenex for the steward. (Oddly, the beer was otherwise excellent and scored pretty well considering. Bottle inspection falls into one of those categories that express the appeal of the brew as a "product". After all: competing pits your abilities to duplicate a style against others, usually using a commercial example as a yardstick. Part of the commercial example's appeal is always the presentation. If this weren't true, all bottles would be the same shape and color, and we would not have the plethora of beer glass styles out there. You'd be given generic beer in a generic bottle or in a generic glass. If you gave your buddy a bottle of your brew to taste (the ultimate competition: do your chums like your beer) and it had a rope of hog-snot in it, I don't think he'd like it very much. On fill levels... I personally don't pay particular attention to fill level (unless the beer was really good and a "proper" fill would have provided me more :-) I've not done any experimentation on bottle-induced oxidation, but I'm doubtful that the tiny airspace above the conditioning brew can be that large a source of oxidative damage. (I believe Algis should be able to comment on this after having performed that experiment on fill level vs carbonation a while back. Al: were the low-fill bottles oxidized?) FWIW, I think "avoid sources of oxidation" is more valid than "fill the bottle higher" when oxidized brews are encountered. Hell! How do you know they aren't CO2 purging first? Kind of makes a monkey out of you. And comments like "Nice fill level" are really quite inane. I have had stellar beers in half full-bottles, and oxidized plant-food beers in "fill-level poster child" bottles. On calibrating... Wow! It would be EXCELLENT, I think, if the first round of every flight was a commercial example or accepted calibrator. And that brew should be kept at table for comparison purposes. I like that idea! Could help quell some of the "that judge didn't have a clue..." comments prevalent in recent competitions. Wow. At least all the judges at table would be on the same page. See ya! Pat Babcock in SE Michigan pbabcock at oeonline.com Home Brew Digest Janitor janitor at hbd.org HBD Web Site http://hbd.org The Home Brew Page http://oeonline.com/~pbabcock/brew.html "Just a cyber-shadow of his former brewing self..." -------------------------------------------------------- From: Spencer W Thomas Date: Thu, 06 Aug 1998 10:42:23 -0400 Subject: Calibration & Bottle inspection Charley Burns wants to calibrate on the style for the flight. Not a bad idea, but... To take an extreme example, suppose you're judging "Belgian Ales." Should you calibrate with a triple, a double, a wit, or maybe a lambic (assuming lambics have been collapsed with the other Belgians for the competition)? Even "simple" styles such as "stout" are problematic in this respect -- is the calibrator a dry stout, an imperial stout, or something in between? And what if the "excellent example" that the organizer buys happens to be mishandled in shipping? For example, I would never suggest using Pilsner Urquel as a calibrator, because almost every bottle I get is skunked. Heck, I've even had "faded" bottles of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. It is the organizer's responsibility to put at least one judge on each flight who has some familiarity with the style, and it is the judges' responsibility to tell the organizer the styles that they have no clue about. Charley, I'm curious why you learned nothing from your "Wit" judging experience, especially if there were four "experts" at the table. It sounds like they failed in their responsibility to educate you about the style and what they were or weren't tasting in the beer. And what competition was it that could devote a whole flight to wit beers with 5 judges? Our largest local competition folds all the Belgians together and we can usually only afford to put 2 judges per table as it is. ---------------- Carl Saxer writes: CL> Many times I have seen judges' objectivity of beer they were CL> about to judge swayed by what they perceived to be an CL> inapproprate fill level, or a neck ring. I'm sorry. This is not a reason for removing the bottle inspection section on the form. This is a fault in those judges, and one that they should work on correcting, and that any judges working with them should work on discouraging. Whether or not there is a section on the form for "bottle inspection," judges are going to look at the bottle. Those who think a neck ring automatically means the beer is infected will still think so, regardless of whether they have a blank to write someting down in. The right answer is JUDGE EDUCATION! Scott's suggestion of having the steward pour the beer into a pitcher is about the only way to avoid bottle-induced bias. Of course, the "double pour" would affect head and reduce the initial aroma in the glass. =Spencer Thomas in Ann Arbor, MI (spencer at umich.edu) -------------------------------------------------------- From: Shortell, Joanne Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 09:16:50 -0400 Subject: Commercial Examples in Judging Gregory A. Lorton recently posted the following in the context of judging Belgian Wits, a style with which he was not familiar: "But as a precursor to judging, why not get us started with an excellent example of what the style is SUPPOSED to taste, smell, look, feel like?" One problem with his idea is the poor quality of many imported beers. So many are old, oxidized, etc., that it would be difficult to ensure that they did represent the style. I love Belgian Wits and drank them almost every day during a trip to Belgium. I rarely buy them here and when I do I'm usually disappointed. If I entered a Belgian Wit in a contest, I wouldn't want a novice judge thinking that the style is supposed to be as bland as many commercial examples are by the time we buy them. -------------------------------------------------------- From: Houseman, David L Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 11:00:52 -0400 Subject: Chlorophenols Byron Gros asks "Are chlorophenols really that rare a problem?" In judging around the country, I've found that this is one of the leading technical flaws in homebrews, particuarly those that may have come from beginners (and education problem). Regionally perhaps the level of chlorine in water is higher in some areas of the country than others. I know that where my sister lives there's so much chlorine in the water that her coffee from Mr Coffee was very chlorophenolic and when I suggested she switch to bottled water, there was a remarkable improvement in the coffee; I only imagine what the homebrew there is like if the brewers aren't preboiling, filtering or using bottled water. I don't find that chlorophenols are all that rare, just the opposite. At least it provides the opportunity for very specific feedback to the brewer! Dave Houseman -------------------------------------------------------- From: Dave Sapsis Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 09:00:45 -0700 Subject: fill or full Dan, I love you too: "Little things. Esthetics." The latest digest actually presents the quandry associated with bottle inspection quite well. On the one hand, based on visual observations of the bottle we may be able to identify sources for percieved flaws; on the other hand we may also significantly bias our impressions based on observations that have nothing to do with the process of percpetion that are the basis for scoring, comments, feedback. Taken to the limit, we have the judge who refuses to sample a beer with a neck ring. Personally, my experience has been that bottle observations trigger bias in people, thus put me in the camp with Scott. If a bottle is half full (but never seen by the judges) and renderes a highly oxidized beer -- wouldn't comments suggesting things like "stale, musty, wet-paper characterisitcs indicate oxygen pick-up -- watch out for oxygentating hot wort and post-ferment beer, particularly during packaging" works sufficiently? Now whether the esthetic appearance of the *bottle* merits consideration, maybe to some. For me its what's in the glass that counts. Peace. --dave dave_sapsis at fire.ca.gov -------------------------------------------------------- From: Charley Burns Date: Thu, 6 Aug 98 08:53 PDT Subject: Re: Calibration & Bottle inspection At 10:42 AM 8/6/98 -0400, Spencer W Thomas wrote: >Charley Burns wants to calibrate on the style for the flight. > >Not a bad idea, but... > >To take an extreme example, suppose you're judging "Belgian Ales." >Should you calibrate with a triple, a double, a wit, or maybe a lambic >(assuming lambics have been collapsed with the other Belgians for the >competition)? > >Even "simple" styles such as "stout" are problematic in this respect >-- is the calibrator a dry stout, an imperial stout, or something in >between? A plausible argument, but... We could still recalibrate between substyles. Admittedly this would cause more beer drinking than we need during judging, and cost more money if we used commercial examples. It just seems that since there are so many novice judges (many times 2 out of 3 on a panel) that it would just help a **lot** to have excellent examples on hand. >And what if the "excellent example" that the organizer buys happens to >be mishandled in shipping? For example, I would never suggest using >Pilsner Urquel as a calibrator, because almost every bottle I get is >skunked. Heck, I've even had "faded" bottles of Sierra Nevada Pale >Ale. No, its not a perfect world, and in that case it would be the *experienced* judge's responsibility to point out what happened and just be another bad beer to evaluate. But at least we would have tried to set a good example. In terms of PU - I have had similar experiences with that stuff. But, based on reading that the skunkiness can fade, I have also stored PU in my fridge at home for 6 months (cold and dark) and indeed come up with a great beer with no skunking. Takes a lot of planning, but its possible. > >Charley, I'm curious why you learned nothing from your "Wit" judging >experience, especially if there were four "experts" at the table. It >sounds like they failed in their responsibility to educate you about >the style and what they were or weren't tasting in the beer. And what >competition was it that could devote a whole flight to wit beers with >5 judges? Our largest local competition folds all the Belgians >together and we can usually only afford to put 2 judges per table as >it is. Well, I was too strong when I said "...learned nothing". Exaggerating to make a point I guess. At the outset I remember saying something like "OK, what's a Wit supposed to taste like". At that point I think it was Martin Lodahl that launched into a 5-10 minute dissertation on Belgian Wit. I took notes. It may not have been Martin, but it was someone with a similar beard that knew an awful lot about beer. It was the preliminary round of the California State Fair, March 1997 (almost a year and half ago). We did only 3 styles that evening, Belgian Wheat/Lambic, Belgian Strongs and Pale Ales (stretching memory limits here). There were a BUNCH of judges that showed up. Charley -------------------------------------------------------- From: Bob McCracken Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 13:57:04 -0400 Subject: Bottles >>Personally I would like to see this section on the score sheet disappea= r. As a judge, I would rather not even see the bottle. For a truly blind tasting, just give me a glass of beer with an entry number.... I think quibbling over fill levels is especially assinine. That's my opinion, anyway. I would welcome other opinions. Scott Birdwell (Master judge)<<= Ditto, and I've always wondered about those people who bring flashlights = to contests to inspect the bottles... A ring may or may not be a sign of infection, a high or low level may or may not be a sign of proper carbonation. But it's the beer in the glass y= ou are judging, not the recipe, or the brewer, or the bottle. As to comments relating to the bottle, frankly they are pretty rare, unle= ss the beer is problematic. One reason I do like to have the bottle is so I can gauge the temperature= of the beer. We seem to have had a spate of over chilled beers in the contests I have judged lately, and by being able to feel the bottle beforehand, we have been able to warm them up sufficiently to taste them more correctly. Bob Portland, Oregon 06-Aug-98