Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 09:39:27 -0500
Message-Id: <199804031439.JAA14568 at synchro.com>
From: owner-judge-digest at synchro.com
To: judge-digest at synchro.com
Subject:   judge-digest V1 #1562
Reply-To: judge at synchro.com
Errors-To: owner-judge-digest at synchro.com
Precedence: bulk


judge-digest                Friday, 3 April 1998        Volume 01 : Number 1562

 ============================================================================
       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          <chuck at synchro.com>
 Archivist:        Spencer Thomas     <spencer at umich.edu>
 Publisher:        SynchroSystems     <info at synchro.com>

 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:

 more on scoresheets
 Is the BJCP defunct?
 3 points for appearance
 New score sheets

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

From: "Curt Speaker" <speaker at safety-1.safety.psu.edu>
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 08:44:34 EST
Subject: more on scoresheets

I used the new score sheet for the first time this past weekend at 
T.R.A.S.H. VIII (great job guys/gals!)
I won't beat to death the thoughts that have been put forth my many 
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).  
And weighting the aroma to be worth more than overall impression 
doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me either.
Were these changes made to the scoresheet according to requests or 
concerns from brewers/judges?  I think the old sheets worked just 
fine, and I am certainly of the mindset that "If it ain't broke, why 
fix it?".  At the competition, I constantly found myself erasing and 
recalculating because I was still used to the old distribution of 
points.
Is it too late to recall the old sheets and go back to the 1997 and 
earlier versions???

Curt

Curt Speaker                         
Biosafety Officer 
Penn State University                
Environmental Health and Safety    
speaker at ehs.psu.edu                   
http://www.ehs.psu.edu
^...^
(O_O)
=(Y)=
 """

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

From: Bill Giffin <billg at ctel.net>
Date: Thu, 02 Apr 1998 09:32:16 -0500
Subject: Is the BJCP defunct?

Top of the morning to yea all,

The bylaws state:
5.4.6

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
remember that there wasn't enough interest to have an election last year, I
could be wrong, but if true we do not have a duly elected board of
directors.  Nor can we based on our bylaws.  You have to meet the deadlines!

A bit over two years ago we voted on the ridiculous bylaws that supposedly
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
Federal Identification Number.  Any idiot can fill out this form as it only
requires the name and address of the entity and who are the officers, a
date and a signature.  Really high powered stuff.

We have missed the dead line for filing the Tax-exempt status forms with
the IRS.  With extensions there is over two years in which you can file.
As a result we now have two tax returns that need to be filed, which are
late.  We can expect penalties and fines from the IRS for failure to file.
Isn't that just wonderful?  Our lackluster manner won't help the BJCP in
getting tax-exempt status.  

I agreed to prepare the tax forms on December 7, 1997.  After waiting for
three months for any of the information requested to be able to prepare all
the forms I withdrew my offer as I knew that I had no hope of completing
the work on a timely manner.  The value of this offer had I charged my
normal billing rates would have been from a low of $4,000 to a more likely
amount of $15,000.  See Scott I am willing to put my money where my mouth
is.  As a C.P.A. with over twenty years of experience I am well qualified
to prepare the forms and have done so successfully on a number of occasions.

We were told that we would be kept informed of the workings of the BJCP via
a newsletter to come out every quarter.  We should have received eight
newsletters.  We have only received three.  

Our board of director acts more like a secret society rather then
representative forum from each region of the country.  We are never
informed of anything that happens in our board meetings even though there
is supposed to be a secretary.  Hush, hush burn before reading is the rule
our board uses.  Keep the membership, as mushrooms I feel the board sees
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.   

Perhaps it is time to move forward.  Form a new Judging program.  Let the
officers as they stand pay the fines and penalties to the IRS as they are
jointly and severely responsible for them.  

I find it sad that we can not even follow our own by-laws.

Bill


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

From: Jeremy Bergsman <jeremybb at stanford.edu>
Date: Thu, 02 Apr 1998 10:12:45 -0800
Subject: 3 points for appearance

I would like to offer my opinion on the allotment of 3 points for color
on the new scoresheet.  I am on the scoresheet committee, although this
message is my own opinion.

When was the last time you gave a beer 2 or less for appearance?  If you
haven't done this what have been doing is scoring the beer between 3 and
6 on appearance.  Simply subtract 3 points from what you would have
given on the old sheet and put down that score on the new sheet.  Those
3 points were just a "freebie" that were given to every beer.  What is
the point of that? 

I can see why Ken Jucks feels that beers score lower with the new sheet
since these freebies have been taken away.  What I think is useful about
the new scoresheet design is that these points have been reassigned to
categories that need room for more scoring lattitude.  With the new top
category I hope that judges will feel the need to score the very best
beers in the upper 40s, and slightly worse beers accordingly.  This
addresses a problem that I know I have which is that I have had to adopt
a somewhat stilted use of the aroma and flavor sections so that my
scores are in line with other judges.

For example I recently judged in the wonderful World Cup of Beer final
round.  There were 4 experienced judges on the flight and on most of the
beers our scores fell in a 3 point range without any discussion.  This
says to me that I am calibrated with judges in my area at least.  Let's
analyze my scoring.

I seem to remember a dry stout that had an excellent aroma.  Maybe not
quite perfect, but quite close to the mark.  OK, this is not a 10, but
must be at least 8.  Appearance: perfect--6, that was easy.  Body,
including carbonation, were also perfect given the fact that it was
served in a bottle--5.  I already have 19 points.  The flavor turns out
to be delicious but too big for the style.  I don't remember the
details, but maybe too sweet, slight alcoholic warmth, too malty and
bitter, etc.  Now this is a good beer, just not to style.  I am inclined
to give an 8 or so in Drinkability and Overall Impression.  Now I have
27 points, with flavor still to go.  I know that a beer this far from
style (i.e. a little far from style on 4 or 5 points, see Giffin, B, et
al.) will score in the mid to low 30s at best.  Do I give it a 6 in
flavor to achieve 33?  Obviously not.  OK, rethink body--is it really
perfect since the beer is too big otherwise?  Well, yes it seems pretty
much perfect, maybe 4 is a justifiable score.  D+OI, OK, penalize the
guy/gal here for being out of style, even though this section does not
seem to report that much on style, but 7 is really the lowest I can go
on such a good beer.  Flavor deserves at least 10 and I get
8,6,10,4,7=35.  Despite my efforts to come down, I was high judge on
this one by several points (our one real disagreement).

I could do this again with a few other examples but I'm sure you don't
want to read all that.  In short I find myself constrained to flavor
scores between 8 and 14 if I'm honest in the other sections and want my
scores to work out.  7 points of signal and 12 points of freebie out of
a 50 point total on the most important section.  I'd be interested in
hearing how someone else breaks out of this situation.

With the new sheet judges will have to change their scoring, but I think
this will be better in the long run.  A beer like the one above would be
easier to score because, in part, those 3 appearance points are gone.
The best beers under the new sheet will have to get very high flavor
scores which they don't now (I believe flavor is the main category where
you make a perfect beer score 43).  This means that the reasonable
flavor score my dry stout deserved would have put it below the best
beers in both flavor score and total score, but still in its appropriate
scoring range.

Sorry for the length.  The scoresheet committee worked very hard.  I
have 2 MB of email generated over more than a year on the new sheet.  I
believe that if judges try the sheet (assuming it becomes the official
sheet which it IS NOT yet) and be willing to change their scoring
techniques, they will find that their scores can better reflect the beer
and come up with the "right" number at the end.
- -- 
Jeremy Bergsman
jeremybb at leland.stanford.edu
http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~jeremybb

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

From: George_De_Piro at berlex.com
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 15:01:49 -0800
Subject: New score sheets

     Hi all,
     
     I was at a contest in Latham, NY a few weeks back where we used the 
     new scoresheets.  I liked using them overall, especially the ability 
     to give a beer a score lower than 19 (thus increasing the usable 
     scoring range).
     
     I have two suggestions for improvement of the sheets, though:
     
     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.
     
     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?
     
     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.
     
     As I said, overall, I think that they are great sheets.  The two 
     comments I have are relatively minor.
     
     Have fun!
     
     George De Piro  (Nyack, NY)

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

End of judge-digest V1 #1562
****************************

 Send subscription cancellations & changes to judge-request at synchro.com.
 Messages sent to the wrong address will be ignored.