Return-Path: owner-judge at synchro.com Received: from srvr20.engin.umich.edu (root at srvr20.engin.umich.edu [141.212.2.26]) by srvr5.engin.umich.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id TAA17183 for ; Mon, 9 Feb 1998 19:24:25 -0500 (EST) Received: from twins.rs.itd.umich.edu (0 at twins.rs.itd.umich.edu [141.211.83.39]) by srvr20.engin.umich.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id TAA25376 for ; Mon, 9 Feb 1998 19:24:20 -0500 (EST) Received: (from root at localhost) by twins.rs.itd.umich.edu (8.8.6/2.5) with X.500 id TAA11738; Mon, 9 Feb 1998 19:25:35 -0500 (EST) Received: from uu6.psi.com (uu6.psi.com [38.145.155.3]) by twins.rs.itd.umich.edu (8.8.6/2.5) with SMTP id TAA11725; Mon, 9 Feb 1998 19:25:34 -0500 (EST) Received: by uu6.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.071791-PSI/PSINet) via UUCP; id AA14264 for spencer at umich.edu; Mon, 9 Feb 98 19:23:01 -0500 Received: (from majordom at localhost) by synchro.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id SAA16564 for judge-digest-outgoing; Mon, 9 Feb 1998 18:47:18 -0500 Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 18:47:18 -0500 Message-Id: <199802092347.SAA16564 at synchro.com> From: owner-judge-digest at synchro.com To: judge-digest at synchro.com Subject: judge-digest V1 #1534 Reply-To: judge at synchro.com Errors-To: owner-judge-digest at synchro.com Precedence: bulk judge-digest Monday, 9 February 1998 Volume 01 : Number 1534 ============================================================================ 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 Subscriptions: judge-request at synchro.com Archive: http://realbeer.com/spencer/judge BJCP info: geninfo at bjcp.synchro.com ============================================================================ contents: Judging Process Questions Re: C on my scoresheet scoresheet completeness Re: Appropriate Scoresheets Competition Schedule Amateur judging Competitions, Why? Knickerbocker Battle of the Brews BJCP Exam/ BUZZ Off Review sessions ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Doug A. Mccullough" Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 10:36:34 -0600 Subject: Judging Process Questions Greetings, I just judged at the Emerald Coast Brew Off, my first live judging experience with the BJCP's Guidelines instead of the AHA's. (It was a fine and fun event in Destin.) Perhaps some of you can help me with a couple of issues. Question 1: When handing over a beer in the Fruit Beer or the Herb/Spice/Veggie Beer categories, should the steward tell the judges nothing more than the category or should the judges be given additional information such as the ingredients, whether it is a variation on a classic style and what the brewer named the batch? How do the Guidelines address this matter? Example: We were handed a beer and told that it was a Raspberry Imperial Stout. My fellow judges felt it apropriate to take off points because it did not exemplify the characteristics of an Imperial Stout, even though all agreed it was a delightful fruit beer. I contended that the steward should have told us nothing more than that it was entered in the Fruit Beer category, leaving us to judge the beer on its own merits instead of against a classic style. >From the brewer's standpoint, the beer may have received a higher score if it had been called Fruit Beer" instead of "Raspberry Imperial Stout." For myself in future competitions, I will be giving my entries numbers instead of names for that very reason. Question 2: How do I use the BJCP guidelines category for Bavarian Weizen? Example: We judged a beer entered as a Bavarian Weizen. It was very clear beer, despite our swirling all of the light dusting of yeast off the bottom of the bottle into our glasses. One judge felt that points should be taken off for the lack of yeast cloudiness but another pointed out that the guidelines seem to cover both Hefe and Krystal Weizen. This beer was not identified as one or the other. I guess we could knocked off points, saying it was too clear for a Hefe and too cloudy for a Krystal, but that dodges the issue. If the Guidelines cover both, shouldn't the entrant be required to specify whether it is Hefe or Krystal? Question 3: The competition used the AHA scoresheets but the BJCP guidelines. The AHA scoresheets cover "Body" but the BJCP guidelines for many styles do not specify this parameter. Of course, a great judge would know but we are not all great judges (yet). Should the Guidelines specify body or should BJCP Scoresheets omit that characteristic? Doug McCullough Birmingham (Alabama) BrewMasters BTW: Our Hear Of Dixie Brew Off is March 14. We welcome entrants, judges, stewards and hangers-on. E-mail me at dougmc at bellsouth.net. ------------------------------ From: Scott Bickham Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 11:34:10 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: C on my scoresheet It's typical that among several fairly positive reviews about making examples of scoresheets available, Bill Giffin has to make a personal attack. Note that the beers were judged against the style guidelines. The appropriate one for an English pale ale is (1998 AHA): Classic English-style pale ales are golden to copper colored and display English-variety hop character. High hop bitterness, flavor, and aroma should be evident. This medium-bodied pale ale has low to medium malt flavor and aroma. Low caramel character is allowable. Fruity-ester flavors and aromas are moderate to strong. Chill haze is allowable at cold temperatures. Diacetyl (butterscotch character) should be present at very low levels or not perceived. It was obvious from my mentioning diacetyl twice in the aroma that I felt it was too assertive for the style, hence my deduction of 3 points. This illustrates that any critique of a scoresheet should only be made by someone who is familiar with the different interpretations of the style, or who is at least willing to peruse the guidelines. Bill asks: > Could the copper color be > caused by the crystal malt? Is "with crystal malt high lights" redundant? Not at all. Crystal malt tends to give a ruby color, as opposed to the amber/copper color of pale malt. The reddish tinge to pale ales is usually due to crystal malt. See the Zymurgy Special issue on malts for further reading. > Was the haze caused in the kettle? What if the brewer had used Irish moss, > wouldn't that make Scott look rather silly, a Master judge giving > recommendation of something that had already been done? As Fix states, most homebrewers do not use enough Irish moss to have the desired effect. As the style guidelines state, some chill haze is allowed, but I obviously felt it was excessive. > Most of the English ales I have looked at don't use wheat > and when they do they used torrified wheat. Scott just said wheat not very > helpful. A technically proficient judge knows that any wheat - torrified, malted or unmalted will aid head retention due to the increased protein content. The exact type of wheat is therefore not important. Wheat is quite commonly used in English breweries, though I don't know how you can determine this by "looking". > For flavor Scott said, "Starts with a bready maltiness, then evolves to > good English hop flavor. Diacetyl is complementary. Moderate bitterness > that lingers at a pleasant level. Has a touch of grassiness. Could be > crisper." All of the above sounds are what I might expect of an English > pale ale. Why take off 8 points? 8 points off for not being crisp enough? > Does an English pale ale have to be crisp? I don't thinks so. The grassiness is a flavor that is not common in English ales, and is usually due to oxidized humulenes or malt compounds. In any case it is a major flaw, and I also felt the lack of crispness (under- conditioning) was also a problem, even for this style. > Some of the comments indicate that the beer may be a touch old. > If that is the case then conditioning won't take care of the problem. The beer was two weeks old, so you get an "F" for making this assumption and using it to downgrade your opinion of this scoresheet. > Seems to me > that a number of hops, English types at that, are described as being > grassy. I don't recollect any reference to malt making a beer taste > grassy; here perhaps Scott can enlighten me. See Meilgaard's series in the MBAA Tech. Quarterly (1975) for a list of compounds that give grassy flavors. Fresh English hops do not impart these characteristics, but poorly stored ones do. See Fixs' Analysis of Brewing Techniques on characteristics of different hops. > We have to tell the brewer what we think is right or wrong with the beer. > Describing the beer just doesn't do the job and to my opinion that is all > Scott did on the above example. Trying to second-guess what went wrong > with a brew with out knowing the recipe, process and a lot more is not > helpful to a brewer. Tell the brewer why it isn't to style and what faults > the beer has that is helpful. I happened to acquire the recipe for the beer after the judging. Turns out the brewer used some Durst Vienna malt, which gave it a slight grassiness and found out too late that his supply of Irish moss had run out. He provided it to me in a carbonator before the exam and it didn't have enough time to properly condition. Seems like I hit the nail on the head, but Bill would claim that it was a lucky guess. The brewer was told about the flaws - high diacetyl, excessive haze and the grassiness. I claim that with my judging experience and technical background, I can do a lot better than "second guess" what went wrong. Though I am sometimes wrong, at least I identified several possible (and common) origins of these flaws in the brewing process, and some of these may not be obvious to the brewer. For example, you yourself learned that lager malts and old hops can lend grassy flavors to pale ales! Good brewing, Scott ------------------------------ From: isenhour at uiuc.edu Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 11:31:24 -0600 (CST) Subject: scoresheet completeness I think that as competitions get bigger, the flights tend to get larger to the point where there is both palate and judge fatique, and a lack of time to fill out the sheets with the detail shown in the examples. It also seems to me that that if pressed for time and its a good beer the comments lean to compliments similar to "spot on for x". If you have three nice beers and its a subjective call to be discussed - the 3rd place person may be left wondering why they didnt do better (so go back and write it down). What I think would help is a BJCP mandated maximum flight number coupled with a minimum time allowance, derived from psych. perceptual science and some of Meilgards work. Good luck on enforcement :) I know this can be a big problem if your site is only available for an alloted time, judges pull a no-show and your competition got 75 more entries than expected 3 days before the deadline. But this does affect the judging process and should be examined. I've had to evaluate 13 barleywines and 14 stouts (etc etc) before and I felt that the last 3 or 4 were not getting the best of my capacity. Then the next round turns out to be tripel or belgian strong or scotch and you thank Bacchus it isnt the dozen meads. I dont think there are any ideal solutions. But once a friend of mine got a scoresheet back from a national comp., and the ONLY comment was "This don't do it for me" Now, I'm certainly not perfect (at least all the time;-) but I found that wildly irritating. john isenhour at usa.net ASBC/IBS/AAAS/NYAS/AHA/BJCP "A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila." Mitch Ratliffe, _Technology Review_ April, 1992 ------------------------------ From: John DeCarlo Date: Thu, 05 Feb 1998 13:41:07 -0500 Subject: Re: Appropriate Scoresheets "Houseman, David L" wrote: >> Poor scoresheets is one reason there has been some discussion amongst >> the graders of exams of providing a service to actually grade any >> scoresheet, submitted by an entrant that feels they have received a >> particularly poor -- or excellent -- scoresheet in competition) and >> provide the judge with the feedback, both positive and negative about >> their actual efforts in competitions. Hmmm. As I have said several times over the years on this forum, I wish I had copies of my own scoresheets for personal review and would love to have someone more knowledgeable review them. It would be the single best way for me to improve as a judge. Maybe I will have a sticker made to put on each scoresheet I fill out that says something like the following: "I will pay $1.00 to any entrant who mails me a copy of my scoresheet with comments on where they feel I helped or failed as a judge. Mail to: ..." John DeCarlo, The MITRE Corporation, My Views Are My Own Email: jdecarlo at mitre.org Voice: 703-883-7116 Fax: 703-883-3383 ------------------------------ From: jac at iex.net (John A. Carlson, Jr.) Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 13:23:49 -0700 (MST) Subject: Competition Schedule I am running a homebrew competition this Saturday that is AHA sanctioned. Last year I sanctioned with AHA and registered with the BJCP to support both organizations. This year I decided to go only with AHA since $20 of the $40 fee goes directly to the BJCP to provide me with a judge list and to record experience points. Why is my competion not listed on the BJCP calendar on the BJCP web page? Is this too much to ask for the $20 that the BJCP is getting? - --John Carlson National Boulder, CO ------------------------------ From: Dave Sapsis Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 15:56:45 -0800 Subject: Amateur judging Bill gives Scott a (generous) C for his example scoresheet of an English Pale Ale. Thanks for not grading mine, Bill. Personally, I would love to see an 'A' sheet from Mssr. Giffen. While some of his comments have validity in regard to a really exemplary sheet, we purposefully posted actual shoresheets done in a similar environment to that encountered in comps. We could, alternatively, have created an entirely fabricated scoresheet that would be both without fault and useless. What we are trying to do here is show what a scoresheet can look like, and describe the procedure or method involved in getting there. Be as descriptive as possible. Compare those perceptions to what you were looking for. If it is not explicitly stated, the entrant still has the style guidelines that go along with the comp to know what the marks are. Scoring is totally subjective, but needs to jibe with the tone of the remarks. Flavors are not "bad"; impressions of them can be. Offer generalized feedback where gaps between observed and expected exist. Try not to be presumptive of goods/procedures of which you have no factual evidence. Bill complains that all we did was fill out lines. I would argue that quantity does in fact at least give credence to the fact that the beer was scrutinized. How often do you get a scoresheet with no description of the color. It may say appropriate, but that is not a color. Same for body. Bill also laments that a bunch of the descriptive sections on Scott's sheet sound just like what he (Bill) expects out of an english Pale Ale. The problem is, he isnt judging the beer, so his opinions don't count. The fact that both of us saw the beer as having some faults and some strengths were why there were some deductions. We tried to identify the resons for non-perfect scores. That said, I have never given a 10 on aroma, nor a 19 on flavor. Doesn't mean I never will, but I guess I like to leave a little freeboard. We all know that act of beer evaluation is subjective, so lets recognize that within this limitation, there is room to show how purposeful method can be used to effectively reach the objectives of the BJCP program. While everyone knows that it is the first question of the exam, many practicing judges are failing miserably. As testament, Bryan inquires whether most proctor scoresheets are akin to these. In some instances the proctor sheets are excellent. However, I have seen some proctor sheets that would have a have trouble passing if it were *those* being graded. In some instances the quality of the scoresheets of of examinees is higher than that of the proctors. Hence, these discussions are as applicable to existing judges as to future ones. peace, - --dave ------------------------------ From: Bill Giffin Date: Fri, 06 Feb 1998 10:43:35 -0500 Subject: Competitions, Why? Top of the morning to yea all, Why do we have homebrew competitions? I have read the rules for a lot of competitions and nowhere do I find the purpose for the competition. Is a competition to provide feedback to the brewer so that his brewing will be improved? Is the competition to rank the beers so some brewer can win the most wonderful prizes and ribbons? The AHA National Homebrew Competition doesn't explain why there competition is being held. I guess they expect we will all know that it there make the AHA money and provide more ridiculous recipes to print in Zymurgy. Perhaps competitions should be only to rank the beers to win. I don't think that you are assured of getting good feedback from a homebrew competition. Taking a beer to a homebrew club meeting and have some of the more experienced brewers evaluate you beer and give suggestions to improve the beer is a far better method of improving your brewing skills then sending that same beer off to a competition. With all the talk about score sheets, remember that there are no established standards to fill out a score sheet. Perhaps there should be. If a competition's purpose is to provide feedback to the brewer, wouldn't it be helpful for the judge to have the recipe? The brewer's identity could be with held from the judge while still providing the judge with the information. I know that there has been a great deal of resistance to giving the judge the recipe and as yet no one has adequately explained why. Perhaps this means that we need some standards. Procedures on how we should fill out the score sheet. It may be that the current score sheet is inadequate to properly evaluate beer. Can the score sheet be made more meaningful, I think so. It is time to move on and improve competitions. Better rules, better score sheets, and well trained judges would go a long way to improving our hobby of competition brewing. Bill ------------------------------ From: Krebs Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 17:01:09 -0500 (EST) Subject: Knickerbocker Battle of the Brews The Saratoga Thoroughbrews Homebrew Club will be holding the third annual Knickerbocker Battle of the Brews at Malt River Brewing Company in Latham, NY on March 7, 1998. Beer, mead, and cider will be judged. Prizes will be awarded for category winners as well as for Best of Show. If you would like to enter or judge at our contest please see our web page for complete details: http://www.moonbrew.com/kbotb or call Keith 518-462-9293 for an entry packet. - --------------------------- Paul Krebs pkrebs at cris.com ------------------------------ From: Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 17:40:28 -0500 Subject: BJCP Exam/ BUZZ Off Review sessions To: judge at synchro.com cc: David.Houseman BrewIPA Robert P MATTIE[USSBPH01.MATTIR00] From: Chuck R Hanning at SB_PHARM_RD Date: 09-Feb-98 10:40:28 PM Subject: BJCP Exam/ BUZZ Off Review sessions Categories: To all interested in BJCP exam in mid atlantic area: A BJCP exam will be held on Friday June 26 at 7pm in the Malvern area as part of the BUZZ Off homebrew competion (QE for MCAB). In addition, six review sessions will be held for the exam on April 14, 21, May 5, 19, and June 2, 16 at 7pm at Beer Unlimited in Malvern. If you are interested in taking the exam and/or the review sessions please e-mail Dave Houseman at: David.Houseman at unisys.com or call Beer Unlimited at 610-889-0905 to register. Chuck Hanning President BUZZ ------------------------------ End of judge-digest V1 #1534 **************************** Send subscription cancellations & changes to judge-request at synchro.com. Messages sent to the wrong address will be ignored.