Subject: Digest for the period 1/23/2004 - 1/24/2004 Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 01:03:23 -0500 Table of contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Re: Test Heresy (Bill Wible) 2. Re: Test Heresy (Jay Spies) (Denny Conn) 3. Re: Belgians (Tom & Dana Karnowski) 4. BJCP exam musings (George de Piro) 5. BJCP Representative Elections (Michael L. Hall) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Wible Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 12:39:46 -0500 Subject: Re: Test Heresy Well said, Jay. I just remember leaving that exam, and my hand being cramped for a long time after. There was alot of writing. And alot of time management. One trick would be to survey all the questions quickly at the start, and then jump to the questions you think you might know best, and answer those first, while you're still fresh. You don't have to answer the questions in order. I guess its natural in that kind of test to always feel there was more you could have written, or that you didn't put down everything you could have. A few of us who all took the test together all went to a bar afterward, and that was the subject of conversation for a couple hours. Every time one of us mentioned something, another of us smacked our forehead and said "Jeez, I knew that, but I didn't write it." Overall, I also thought the test we got was very fair, was exactly what I thought it would be, and if anything, I thought we may even have had a slightly "easier" version, since our recipe formulation question was for Octoberfest, a very common and well known style. I'm glad it wasn't something more difficult. Given the amount of writing involved and that some people do write slower, I wouldn't complain if even another half hour was added to the test. I know my hand hurt so bad that I had some problems writing the last 2 or 3 questions. Bill ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Denny Conn Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 12:51:01 -0800 Subject: Re: Test Heresy (Jay Spies) When I took the test last Oct., we had someone retaking the tasting portion. So that he didn't have to sit through the test for interspersed tastings , we did the alternate format where you write the test first, then do the tasting. After doing it that way, I realized how lucky we were. Trying to do the tasting during the essay portion would certainly have broken up the flow of writing. I think it would be advantageous if this was the standard format. Is there a reason why the tastings have traditionally been interspersed with the essay questions? --------------------->Denny At 01:03 AM 1/22/04 -0500, Jay Spies wrote: >Additionally, the tasting portion of the exam felt rushed and awkward >because it was interspersed at 4 different points throughout the exam. Stop >writing, look, smell, taste, evaluate, scribble, start writing again. I >have never seen judging conducted this way. Everyone who has judged or seen >judging knows there's not that kind of time pressure. How about having the >full exam and then taste the beers afterward instead of having to rush? >Having to interrupt your train of thought to taste a beer, and then get back >into test mode is really distracting, not to mention that it likely detracts >from the quality of my tasting answers because I'm always minding my >internal time clock. ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tom & Dana Karnowski Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 19:46:22 -0500 Subject: Re: Belgians > Will some of the experienced judges give me some sound advice on how to > compare and contrast Belgian Strong Golden Ale and Trippel. The guidelines > vary little and to the untrained or lesser trained these are essentially > the same beer. > the best way is to get some of the commercial examples and compare them When I judge them, I kind of think of the difference as Golden Ales are dryer and tend to be more hoppy in their flavor and spiciness, while the trippel has more yeast character and maybe more malt character. But there is a lot of overlap in the style guidelines, for sure. Often when I judge a beer, if the style is off I suggest an alternate way to enter the beer (i.e. enter it as an ESB instead of an APA). But for these two, I dont' think I've ever said "This isn't a trippel, enter it as a golden strong ale" or vice-versa. I ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: George de Piro Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 23:53:03 -0500 Subject: BJCP exam musings Hi all, As a former exam grader and somebody who has led more than a few BJCP exam study groups, I figured I'd chime in on the current thread. I never thought it important for somebody to quote the exact numbers for gravities, IBUs or color. To clutter your memory with such information seems like a waste to me. I do believe it is important for judges to know the non-numerical descriptions of a style. If somebody writes a complete and accurate description of a style, that would be a fine and complete answer. I would like to give out some unsolicited advice to all those who are going to take the exam: make sure that your answers are written in a logical, consistent manner. One of the most common faults I have found in exam beer descriptions is omission of a key descriptor, like color. This often happens on an exam that otherwise shows that the person does have a good knowledge of beer. Unfortunately for the examinee, the grader has to see all of that knowledge in complete answers rather than inferring it. Write your beer descriptions in the same order the categories are arranged on a score sheet: aroma, appearance, flavor/mouthfeel, and then use the "overall" to make a historical comment and compare/contrast to the other styles in question. You could even present the data as a table! By writing with parallelism, you won't accidentally omit anything, and the grader will have a much easier time reading your paper. Remember: a happy grader is more likely to give you a good score. As for graders giving only 9's for "perfect" answers: I don't know if this is that prevalent. I know that way too many beer judges find fault with beers that are technically fine, because the palates are not well-trained and/or they just have to find fault. I guess the same thing can happen with exam grading, but there is more oversight to help prevent this. With regard to the BJCP exam format: I have proctored several exams over the past few years, and I always split the written and tasting portions of the exam. To interrupt the examinees essay writing with high-pressure tasting is not just a bizarre idea, it is cruel. Let the people get their essays written and then move on to the tasting. By the way, in response to Pete saying that he has never received a poor score sheet from a Master judge, I have to say that I have. I believe it was a result of the person not having any professional palate training and relatively limited brewing experience compared to some of us (OK, I brew as pro, so my standards are pretty high). Any judge, including me, can make mistakes, regardless of rank, and they need to stay humble and realize this. If you have made it this far, you may appreciate this anecdote: Part of Siebel schooling, perhaps the best part, is palate training. Ilse Shelton, a very stern, but excellent, teacher leads the class. At the end of the session, students take a tasting exam. There are 8 beers on the table, each potentially spiked with a chemical mimicking a flaw. As I tasted the beers, I easily discerned the chemical spiked into each of the first three. Number 4 was clean; I correctly recognized the control beer, with nothing spiked into it. Number 7 was tricky; it really smelled pretty normal, but we already had the control, so there must be something wrong with it. A second sniff: yes, it was sour - acetic acid, specifically. Yes, it must be, right. Of course it wasn't! The $%^`at`# put in two controls! She did it to teach us a lesson: if you approach a beer with the attitude that it is flawed, it will be. It was quite a catharsis for me, and changed the way I evaluate beers. (Is it odd, that I rank such an experience so highly? Perhaps I'm a little too crazed about brewing...) To be a master judge should require some sort of palate training under the tutelage of a very experienced person. That would mean more than being able to recite the IBUs of every style in the guidelines. Have fun! George de Piro Head Brewer, C.H. Evans Brewing Company at the Albany Pump Station 19 Quackenbush Square Albany, NY, USA 12207 (518)447-9000 www.EvansAle.com Brewers of Kick-Ass Brown: Twice declared the Best American Brown Ale in the USA at the Great American Beer Festival (2000 & 2002)! ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Michael L. Hall Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 01:00:35 -0700 Subject: BJCP Representative Elections Judging community: There are three BJCP Representative positions which are scheduled to be elected this year: Northeast, Mountain/Northwest, and North. You can see a map showing the regions on the officers page at: http://BJCP.org/officers.html The deadline for nominations is February 1, 2004. Information on the nomination process is included in the BJCP bylaws (http://BJCP.org/bylaws.html), sec. 5.2, which states in part: 5.2 Nominations A current Regular Member of the BJCP may be nominated to represent the region in which he or she resides upon the receipt by the Program Administrator of petition(s) bearing the signatures of five or more current Regular Members of the BJCP residing in the same region, in accordance with the by-laws. The board has recently voted to consider email endorsements to be equivalent to the "petition(s) bearing the signature" mentioned in the bylaws. I encourage you to consider serving the BJCP by becoming a representative from your region. Cheers, -Mike ============================================================================ Michael L. Hall, Ph.D. President, BJCP Board of Directors (Mtn/NW Rep) President, Los Alamos Atom Mashers Member, AHA Board of Advisors ============================================================================ I propose a toast to the four things in life: lying, cheating, stealing, and drinking. If you lie, be it to save a friend. If you cheat, cheat death. If you steal, be it to steal the heart of a loved one. And if you drink, be it to toast long life, health, and happiness. -- Jim Carrier, _The Ship and the Storm_ ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** Subject: Digest for the period 1/23/2004 - 1/24/2004 Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 01:03:23 -0500 Table of contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Re: Test Heresy (Bill Wible) 2. Re: Test Heresy (Jay Spies) (Denny Conn) 3. Re: Belgians (Tom & Dana Karnowski) 4. BJCP exam musings (George de Piro) 5. BJCP Representative Elections (Michael L. Hall) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Wible Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 12:39:46 -0500 Subject: Re: Test Heresy Well said, Jay. I just remember leaving that exam, and my hand being cramped for a long time after. There was alot of writing. And alot of time management. One trick would be to survey all the questions quickly at the start, and then jump to the questions you think you might know best, and answer those first, while you're still fresh. You don't have to answer the questions in order. I guess its natural in that kind of test to always feel there was more you could have written, or that you didn't put down everything you could have. A few of us who all took the test together all went to a bar afterward, and that was the subject of conversation for a couple hours. Every time one of us mentioned something, another of us smacked our forehead and said "Jeez, I knew that, but I didn't write it." Overall, I also thought the test we got was very fair, was exactly what I thought it would be, and if anything, I thought we may even have had a slightly "easier" version, since our recipe formulation question was for Octoberfest, a very common and well known style. I'm glad it wasn't something more difficult. Given the amount of writing involved and that some people do write slower, I wouldn't complain if even another half hour was added to the test. I know my hand hurt so bad that I had some problems writing the last 2 or 3 questions. Bill ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Denny Conn Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 12:51:01 -0800 Subject: Re: Test Heresy (Jay Spies) When I took the test last Oct., we had someone retaking the tasting portion. So that he didn't have to sit through the test for interspersed tastings , we did the alternate format where you write the test first, then do the tasting. After doing it that way, I realized how lucky we were. Trying to do the tasting during the essay portion would certainly have broken up the flow of writing. I think it would be advantageous if this was the standard format. Is there a reason why the tastings have traditionally been interspersed with the essay questions? --------------------->Denny At 01:03 AM 1/22/04 -0500, Jay Spies wrote: >Additionally, the tasting portion of the exam felt rushed and awkward >because it was interspersed at 4 different points throughout the exam. Stop >writing, look, smell, taste, evaluate, scribble, start writing again. I >have never seen judging conducted this way. Everyone who has judged or seen >judging knows there's not that kind of time pressure. How about having the >full exam and then taste the beers afterward instead of having to rush? >Having to interrupt your train of thought to taste a beer, and then get back >into test mode is really distracting, not to mention that it likely detracts >from the quality of my tasting answers because I'm always minding my >internal time clock. ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tom & Dana Karnowski Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 19:46:22 -0500 Subject: Re: Belgians > Will some of the experienced judges give me some sound advice on how to > compare and contrast Belgian Strong Golden Ale and Trippel. The guidelines > vary little and to the untrained or lesser trained these are essentially > the same beer. > the best way is to get some of the commercial examples and compare them When I judge them, I kind of think of the difference as Golden Ales are dryer and tend to be more hoppy in their flavor and spiciness, while the trippel has more yeast character and maybe more malt character. But there is a lot of overlap in the style guidelines, for sure. Often when I judge a beer, if the style is off I suggest an alternate way to enter the beer (i.e. enter it as an ESB instead of an APA). But for these two, I dont' think I've ever said "This isn't a trippel, enter it as a golden strong ale" or vice-versa. I ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: George de Piro Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 23:53:03 -0500 Subject: BJCP exam musings Hi all, As a former exam grader and somebody who has led more than a few BJCP exam study groups, I figured I'd chime in on the current thread. I never thought it important for somebody to quote the exact numbers for gravities, IBUs or color. To clutter your memory with such information seems like a waste to me. I do believe it is important for judges to know the non-numerical descriptions of a style. If somebody writes a complete and accurate description of a style, that would be a fine and complete answer. I would like to give out some unsolicited advice to all those who are going to take the exam: make sure that your answers are written in a logical, consistent manner. One of the most common faults I have found in exam beer descriptions is omission of a key descriptor, like color. This often happens on an exam that otherwise shows that the person does have a good knowledge of beer. Unfortunately for the examinee, the grader has to see all of that knowledge in complete answers rather than inferring it. Write your beer descriptions in the same order the categories are arranged on a score sheet: aroma, appearance, flavor/mouthfeel, and then use the "overall" to make a historical comment and compare/contrast to the other styles in question. You could even present the data as a table! By writing with parallelism, you won't accidentally omit anything, and the grader will have a much easier time reading your paper. Remember: a happy grader is more likely to give you a good score. As for graders giving only 9's for "perfect" answers: I don't know if this is that prevalent. I know that way too many beer judges find fault with beers that are technically fine, because the palates are not well-trained and/or they just have to find fault. I guess the same thing can happen with exam grading, but there is more oversight to help prevent this. With regard to the BJCP exam format: I have proctored several exams over the past few years, and I always split the written and tasting portions of the exam. To interrupt the examinees essay writing with high-pressure tasting is not just a bizarre idea, it is cruel. Let the people get their essays written and then move on to the tasting. By the way, in response to Pete saying that he has never received a poor score sheet from a Master judge, I have to say that I have. I believe it was a result of the person not having any professional palate training and relatively limited brewing experience compared to some of us (OK, I brew as pro, so my standards are pretty high). Any judge, including me, can make mistakes, regardless of rank, and they need to stay humble and realize this. If you have made it this far, you may appreciate this anecdote: Part of Siebel schooling, perhaps the best part, is palate training. Ilse Shelton, a very stern, but excellent, teacher leads the class. At the end of the session, students take a tasting exam. There are 8 beers on the table, each potentially spiked with a chemical mimicking a flaw. As I tasted the beers, I easily discerned the chemical spiked into each of the first three. Number 4 was clean; I correctly recognized the control beer, with nothing spiked into it. Number 7 was tricky; it really smelled pretty normal, but we already had the control, so there must be something wrong with it. A second sniff: yes, it was sour - acetic acid, specifically. Yes, it must be, right. Of course it wasn't! The $%^`at`# put in two controls! She did it to teach us a lesson: if you approach a beer with the attitude that it is flawed, it will be. It was quite a catharsis for me, and changed the way I evaluate beers. (Is it odd, that I rank such an experience so highly? Perhaps I'm a little too crazed about brewing...) To be a master judge should require some sort of palate training under the tutelage of a very experienced person. That would mean more than being able to recite the IBUs of every style in the guidelines. Have fun! George de Piro Head Brewer, C.H. Evans Brewing Company at the Albany Pump Station 19 Quackenbush Square Albany, NY, USA 12207 (518)447-9000 www.EvansAle.com Brewers of Kick-Ass Brown: Twice declared the Best American Brown Ale in the USA at the Great American Beer Festival (2000 & 2002)! ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Michael L. Hall Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 01:00:35 -0700 Subject: BJCP Representative Elections Judging community: There are three BJCP Representative positions which are scheduled to be elected this year: Northeast, Mountain/Northwest, and North. You can see a map showing the regions on the officers page at: http://BJCP.org/officers.html The deadline for nominations is February 1, 2004. Information on the nomination process is included in the BJCP bylaws (http://BJCP.org/bylaws.html), sec. 5.2, which states in part: 5.2 Nominations A current Regular Member of the BJCP may be nominated to represent the region in which he or she resides upon the receipt by the Program Administrator of petition(s) bearing the signatures of five or more current Regular Members of the BJCP residing in the same region, in accordance with the by-laws. The board has recently voted to consider email endorsements to be equivalent to the "petition(s) bearing the signature" mentioned in the bylaws. I encourage you to consider serving the BJCP by becoming a representative from your region. Cheers, -Mike ============================================================================ Michael L. Hall, Ph.D. President, BJCP Board of Directors (Mtn/NW Rep) President, Los Alamos Atom Mashers Member, AHA Board of Advisors ============================================================================ I propose a toast to the four things in life: lying, cheating, stealing, and drinking. If you lie, be it to save a friend. If you cheat, cheat death. If you steal, be it to steal the heart of a loved one. And if you drink, be it to toast long life, health, and happiness. -- Jim Carrier, _The Ship and the Storm_ ********************************************************************** * JudgeNet - the beer judge digest * * Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments * * Send subscription requests & changes to judge-request`at`synchro.com * **********************************************************************