Subject: Digest for the period 3/13/2004 - 3/14/2004 Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 01:04:02 -0500 Table of contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. RE: paying judges (Mike Bennett) 2. Re: Alternate Path to Master (allan.boyce`at`usbank.com) 3. Re: Digest for the period 3/11/2004 - 3/12/2004 (JayAnkeney`at`aol.com) 4. "unevaluatable" beers (Bob Paolino) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Bennett Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 00:17:04 -0800 Subject: RE: paying judges Bob Paolino wrote: > The first time I received a check for judging was an Oregon State > Fair homebrew competition in the early 1990s. The offer > of $50 ($25 honorarium plus up to $25 in expenses) was a complete > surprise. I've judged the OSF competition for a number of years and IIRC they stopped paying judges around 1999-2000. Now the judges receive 2 tickets to the fair, a 6-pack of donated beer and a small assortment of other brewery swag. -- Mike Bennett Head Brewer, Southside Speakeasy, Salem OR Recognized BJCP Beer Judge [1958, 287.1] Apparent Rennerian mjbefn.org ....Give a man a beer, he'll waste an hour. Teach a man to brew and he'll waste a lifetime.... ********************************************************************** * 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: allan.boyce`at`usbank.com Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 10:56:54 -0600 Subject: Re: Alternate Path to Master I have decided that I am in favor of some sort of service-based alternate path to higher ranks within the BJCP. Here are the fundamentals of it from my point of view. If we adopt this system, we are consciously changing our paradigm from one where knowledge first, service second was valued, to one where service is primarily valued. If we promote to Master a BJCP member who has earned Recognized status by virtue of his test score but has accrued sufficient service points to promote him, we lose the objective quality of a high test score. But we gain the subjective quality of someone who has been judging beer and scoring exams a LOT! They say experience is the best teacher, and I would assume then that such a person would be a good Master or above judge. Conversely, we probably all know one or two BJCP judges who show up once a year to judge to retain their membership. Some of them may still be good judges, but it's unlikely that your skills will still be sharp with such sporadic participation. Some of their scoresheets may only have 10 or 12 words on them. But they will still get service points. Granted, it would take them a LONG TIME to earn the service points needed to get to Master or above in this fashion, but some WILL get there eventually. This case will probably be very rare. Is the advantage of retaining great, experienced and active judges worth letting a few not so great ones be "Master" also worth it? I think so. We may already have "lesser Masters" among us. I have not yet judged with a large number of Master judges, but it is conceivable that there may be some who are horrible judges, bad exam graders, or sporadic participants in the BJCP since earning Master status. Just because someone can do well on a test does not necessarily make them a good judge or scorer. Having said all that, I would support this change for people who have earned at least a Certified score (70) on the exam. I think that there IS an advantage to going back at least ONCE to BJCP Class, and to the BJCP Exam. The first time taking the class and the test may be, for many of us, our first exposure to The World of Beer. We may have only brewed once or twice, we may be familiar with only a few world beer styles, and most of us are likely brewing extract only at this point. To get a Recognized score the first time out is no shame. But after having been exposed to Beer in this fashion, our eyes our opened. And we come back to BJCP class and the exam with more experience, knowledge and fervor a year or two later. I have broken out the Pro's and Con's of an Alternate Path to Master and above as I see them: A. PROS: 1. Reward past participation 2. Encourage ongoing participation and new participation 3. Give hope to those with poor test-taking skills 4. Create a larger corps of Master level judges available for contests and test proctors 5. Speed up BJCP Test Results by having a larger corps of graders B. CONS, if we DON'T adopt it... 1. Upset/Lose those sub-90 National judges who have been very active if we don't change 2. Upset/Lose new BJCP judges if their test scores/points are even more delayed because of more volunteers who quit over this. 3. Upset/Lose new and old BJCP judges because they think this issue is beside-the-point of the BJCP. ("To promote beer literacy and the appreciation of real beer, and to recognize beer tasting and evaluation skills.") C. CONS, if we DO adopt it... 1. Upset/Lose those who got to Master via "90" score if we change requirements ("cheapening" the status) 2. Create a two-tier system ("90 pt." vs. "Experience points" Master Judge) 3. Less incentive to re-take BJCP class or test to improve "book learning" of brewing I think the Pro's outweigh the Con's. I would be curious to hear from Master judges who would leave the organization if the requirements were changed. That is the biggest danger I see - we don't want to lose that pool of talent. I'm guessing they may be upset, rightly so, that they had to take the exam 3, 4 or more times to get the 90 score, but others won't have to going forward. But I don't think they'll quit. Hey, this is our hobby! Let's face it - if we didn't love it, we wouldn't be doing it. Hanging a better title behind the name of someone who has given hundreds or thousands of hours to this hobby seems like a worthy honorarium. Al Boyce (hanging titles...) Minnesota Home Brewers Association Incoming BJCP Board Member for the North Region National BJCP Judge (NOT eligible for Master with this proposal!) ********************************************************************** * 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: JayAnkeney`at`aol.com Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 13:57:23 EST Subject: Re: Digest for the period 3/11/2004 - 3/12/2004 In a message dated 3/11/04 10:19:28 PM, judge`at`synchro.com writes: I'd like to respond to a Scott's comment in the 3/11 digest (and add my continued thanks to the moderator for wrangling this valuable E-group) << For example, one member of the former camp had the arrogance to not score a beer at the finals of a recent National competition, while writing the comment that the beer was "unevaluatable" (his word, not mine). This person is a strong proponent of the alternate path to Master, but I honestly cannot find any motivation to reward such arrogance and inconsideration. >> Scott, I don't know who that judge was to whom you so harshly refer, but I'd like to modestly defend his or her position. Some beers entered into competitions are simply too "off" to evaluate. Not only can tasting a foaming, smelly bottle be a truly disgusting experience, but more importantly judges owe it to the entries downstream in a given flite not to pollute their palettes. Yes, I recognize the educational value of an experienced judge pointing out flavor flaws when possible. But due to the vagaries of bottling, handling or misrepresentation, some entries are land mines to the taste buds. Rather than step on them I'd hope judges would politely inform the brewer that the beer had simply gone bad and better luck next time. On the few occasions I've encountered this regrettable phenomenon, I also add "Sorry. It happens to all of us at one time or other"--which is equally regrettably true. Also, my 2 cents on the paying judges issue is to remind everyone that the competition that set off this thread is for commercial brewers, not amateur homebrewers. Somehow that crucial detail seems to be missed by several respondents. Jay Ankeney ********************************************************************** * 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: Bob Paolino Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 17:52:56 -0500 Subject: "unevaluatable" beers In a post making a valid point but also with the potential of triggering a stream of personal attacks that I hope can be kept off-list, Scott wrote on Wed, 10 Mar 2004 07:41:43 -0500: > Unfortunately, some of the "poster childs" for this new level are looking > for a quick and dirty path to the Master level because they do not [snip] example, one > member of the former camp had the arrogance to not score a beer at the > finals of a recent National competition, while writing the comment that the > beer was "unevaluatable" (his word, not mine). This person is a [snip] If I might move away from the rankings discussion for a moment, this idea of how we judge really "bad" beers seems worthy of some discussion itself, so let me kick this one off.... I don't think that returning a one-word scoresheet and refusing even to score a beer with the near-obligatory courtesy minimum score is appropriate judging conduct (okay, it's pretty much inexcusable), but is there something to the idea that some beers might be "unevaluatable," at least on the parameters on which we are expected to judge beers? If, for example, a beer is so badly [insert applicable flaw here] that you can't detect any malt, hop, or other character as appropriate for the style (or beer of any kind), I'll identify the undesirable characteristic and (diplomatically, I hope) say it is so strong that it obscures any [malt, hop, other appropriate characteristic] that might have been present/discernable were it not for the overpowering undesirable characteristic. I suppose in an analytical sense, that's no different from saying that a beer is so malty/sweet or so overhopped (or overspiced in the case of herb/spice beers) that you can't detect the [hop or malt] character, but I can't help but think that the connotation doesn't seem a lot different from the more outwardly arrogant "unevaluatable." Still, it seems better and more respectful to describe the problem rather than just dismissing it as "this sucks" and make no further effort. Where possible, I'll also try to speculate about what might have caused it (sometimes it's obvious, sometimes not) and attempt to offer suggestions for avoiding the problem next time. OTOH, different judges are sensitive to different things and have different thresholds. To give the judge Scott describes the benefit of the doubt, I'll note that I have experienced a few rare occasions where it has been extremely difficult physically even to taste enough of a beer to judge it that it might not be so far off to say it was, for that judge, literally "unevaluatable." What do you do then? I guess I'd still make some kind of effort to proceed as I described above, but I don't know how well I'd do it. I had one embarrassing (I thought it was, anyway) experience in judging an herb/spice flight in which I reacted to a beer that I found so overwhelming in its special ingredient (I'm drawing a blank on what it was supposed to be, but the memory is otherwise quite vivid) that I almost felt I would be sick if I tasted any more of it. It was not one of my finest moments in judging, and after the flight was over, I wished I had written something else. I wrote what I considered an objective description of the flavour I perceived (and it wasn't the spice the beer was said to contain). What I wrote was not derogatory toward the brewer, but neither did the description of my perception have a positive connotation. Compounding my embarrassment was that the other two judges simply loved the beer and scored it very high, so much that I conceded to th em when they wanted to give it an award. One of them thought I was simply crazy that I found the beer undrinkable. I was just getting over a cold and/or allergy symptoms, and although I had done okay in judging the more conventional styles earlier and later in the day, I had to assume that it was simply me, either because of my condition or some sensitivity to the ingredient. Would it be better in that kind of (very rare) situation for that judge simply to not submit a scoresheet and just go by the other judge'[s'] sheet?? Now go have a beer, Bob Paolino "Homer, why don't you get one of those hands-free phones? It's the next best thing to paying attention to the road." --Barney, The Simpsons ( ) ASCII ribbon campaign X against HTML e-mail: / \ Friends don't send friends HTML-bloated messages! A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? ********************************************************************** * 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 3/13/2004 - 3/14/2004 Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 01:04:02 -0500 Table of contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. RE: paying judges (Mike Bennett) 2. Re: Alternate Path to Master (allan.boyce`at`usbank.com) 3. Re: Digest for the period 3/11/2004 - 3/12/2004 (JayAnkeney`at`aol.com) 4. "unevaluatable" beers (Bob Paolino) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Bennett Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 00:17:04 -0800 Subject: RE: paying judges Bob Paolino wrote: > The first time I received a check for judging was an Oregon State > Fair homebrew competition in the early 1990s. The offer > of $50 ($25 honorarium plus up to $25 in expenses) was a complete > surprise. I've judged the OSF competition for a number of years and IIRC they stopped paying judges around 1999-2000. Now the judges receive 2 tickets to the fair, a 6-pack of donated beer and a small assortment of other brewery swag. -- Mike Bennett Head Brewer, Southside Speakeasy, Salem OR Recognized BJCP Beer Judge [1958, 287.1] Apparent Rennerian mjbefn.org ....Give a man a beer, he'll waste an hour. Teach a man to brew and he'll waste a lifetime.... ********************************************************************** * 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: allan.boyce`at`usbank.com Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 10:56:54 -0600 Subject: Re: Alternate Path to Master I have decided that I am in favor of some sort of service-based alternate path to higher ranks within the BJCP. Here are the fundamentals of it from my point of view. If we adopt this system, we are consciously changing our paradigm from one where knowledge first, service second was valued, to one where service is primarily valued. If we promote to Master a BJCP member who has earned Recognized status by virtue of his test score but has accrued sufficient service points to promote him, we lose the objective quality of a high test score. But we gain the subjective quality of someone who has been judging beer and scoring exams a LOT! They say experience is the best teacher, and I would assume then that such a person would be a good Master or above judge. Conversely, we probably all know one or two BJCP judges who show up once a year to judge to retain their membership. Some of them may still be good judges, but it's unlikely that your skills will still be sharp with such sporadic participation. Some of their scoresheets may only have 10 or 12 words on them. But they will still get service points. Granted, it would take them a LONG TIME to earn the service points needed to get to Master or above in this fashion, but some WILL get there eventually. This case will probably be very rare. Is the advantage of retaining great, experienced and active judges worth letting a few not so great ones be "Master" also worth it? I think so. We may already have "lesser Masters" among us. I have not yet judged with a large number of Master judges, but it is conceivable that there may be some who are horrible judges, bad exam graders, or sporadic participants in the BJCP since earning Master status. Just because someone can do well on a test does not necessarily make them a good judge or scorer. Having said all that, I would support this change for people who have earned at least a Certified score (70) on the exam. I think that there IS an advantage to going back at least ONCE to BJCP Class, and to the BJCP Exam. The first time taking the class and the test may be, for many of us, our first exposure to The World of Beer. We may have only brewed once or twice, we may be familiar with only a few world beer styles, and most of us are likely brewing extract only at this point. To get a Recognized score the first time out is no shame. But after having been exposed to Beer in this fashion, our eyes our opened. And we come back to BJCP class and the exam with more experience, knowledge and fervor a year or two later. I have broken out the Pro's and Con's of an Alternate Path to Master and above as I see them: A. PROS: 1. Reward past participation 2. Encourage ongoing participation and new participation 3. Give hope to those with poor test-taking skills 4. Create a larger corps of Master level judges available for contests and test proctors 5. Speed up BJCP Test Results by having a larger corps of graders B. CONS, if we DON'T adopt it... 1. Upset/Lose those sub-90 National judges who have been very active if we don't change 2. Upset/Lose new BJCP judges if their test scores/points are even more delayed because of more volunteers who quit over this. 3. Upset/Lose new and old BJCP judges because they think this issue is beside-the-point of the BJCP. ("To promote beer literacy and the appreciation of real beer, and to recognize beer tasting and evaluation skills.") C. CONS, if we DO adopt it... 1. Upset/Lose those who got to Master via "90" score if we change requirements ("cheapening" the status) 2. Create a two-tier system ("90 pt." vs. "Experience points" Master Judge) 3. Less incentive to re-take BJCP class or test to improve "book learning" of brewing I think the Pro's outweigh the Con's. I would be curious to hear from Master judges who would leave the organization if the requirements were changed. That is the biggest danger I see - we don't want to lose that pool of talent. I'm guessing they may be upset, rightly so, that they had to take the exam 3, 4 or more times to get the 90 score, but others won't have to going forward. But I don't think they'll quit. Hey, this is our hobby! Let's face it - if we didn't love it, we wouldn't be doing it. Hanging a better title behind the name of someone who has given hundreds or thousands of hours to this hobby seems like a worthy honorarium. Al Boyce (hanging titles...) Minnesota Home Brewers Association Incoming BJCP Board Member for the North Region National BJCP Judge (NOT eligible for Master with this proposal!) ********************************************************************** * 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: JayAnkeney`at`aol.com Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 13:57:23 EST Subject: Re: Digest for the period 3/11/2004 - 3/12/2004 In a message dated 3/11/04 10:19:28 PM, judge`at`synchro.com writes: I'd like to respond to a Scott's comment in the 3/11 digest (and add my continued thanks to the moderator for wrangling this valuable E-group) << For example, one member of the former camp had the arrogance to not score a beer at the finals of a recent National competition, while writing the comment that the beer was "unevaluatable" (his word, not mine). This person is a strong proponent of the alternate path to Master, but I honestly cannot find any motivation to reward such arrogance and inconsideration. >> Scott, I don't know who that judge was to whom you so harshly refer, but I'd like to modestly defend his or her position. Some beers entered into competitions are simply too "off" to evaluate. Not only can tasting a foaming, smelly bottle be a truly disgusting experience, but more importantly judges owe it to the entries downstream in a given flite not to pollute their palettes. Yes, I recognize the educational value of an experienced judge pointing out flavor flaws when possible. But due to the vagaries of bottling, handling or misrepresentation, some entries are land mines to the taste buds. Rather than step on them I'd hope judges would politely inform the brewer that the beer had simply gone bad and better luck next time. On the few occasions I've encountered this regrettable phenomenon, I also add "Sorry. It happens to all of us at one time or other"--which is equally regrettably true. Also, my 2 cents on the paying judges issue is to remind everyone that the competition that set off this thread is for commercial brewers, not amateur homebrewers. Somehow that crucial detail seems to be missed by several respondents. Jay Ankeney ********************************************************************** * 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: Bob Paolino Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 17:52:56 -0500 Subject: "unevaluatable" beers In a post making a valid point but also with the potential of triggering a stream of personal attacks that I hope can be kept off-list, Scott wrote on Wed, 10 Mar 2004 07:41:43 -0500: > Unfortunately, some of the "poster childs" for this new level are looking > for a quick and dirty path to the Master level because they do not [snip] example, one > member of the former camp had the arrogance to not score a beer at the > finals of a recent National competition, while writing the comment that the > beer was "unevaluatable" (his word, not mine). This person is a [snip] If I might move away from the rankings discussion for a moment, this idea of how we judge really "bad" beers seems worthy of some discussion itself, so let me kick this one off.... I don't think that returning a one-word scoresheet and refusing even to score a beer with the near-obligatory courtesy minimum score is appropriate judging conduct (okay, it's pretty much inexcusable), but is there something to the idea that some beers might be "unevaluatable," at least on the parameters on which we are expected to judge beers? If, for example, a beer is so badly [insert applicable flaw here] that you can't detect any malt, hop, or other character as appropriate for the style (or beer of any kind), I'll identify the undesirable characteristic and (diplomatically, I hope) say it is so strong that it obscures any [malt, hop, other appropriate characteristic] that might have been present/discernable were it not for the overpowering undesirable characteristic. I suppose in an analytical sense, that's no different from saying that a beer is so malty/sweet or so overhopped (or overspiced in the case of herb/spice beers) that you can't detect the [hop or malt] character, but I can't help but think that the connotation doesn't seem a lot different from the more outwardly arrogant "unevaluatable." Still, it seems better and more respectful to describe the problem rather than just dismissing it as "this sucks" and make no further effort. Where possible, I'll also try to speculate about what might have caused it (sometimes it's obvious, sometimes not) and attempt to offer suggestions for avoiding the problem next time. OTOH, different judges are sensitive to different things and have different thresholds. To give the judge Scott describes the benefit of the doubt, I'll note that I have experienced a few rare occasions where it has been extremely difficult physically even to taste enough of a beer to judge it that it might not be so far off to say it was, for that judge, literally "unevaluatable." What do you do then? I guess I'd still make some kind of effort to proceed as I described above, but I don't know how well I'd do it. I had one embarrassing (I thought it was, anyway) experience in judging an herb/spice flight in which I reacted to a beer that I found so overwhelming in its special ingredient (I'm drawing a blank on what it was supposed to be, but the memory is otherwise quite vivid) that I almost felt I would be sick if I tasted any more of it. It was not one of my finest moments in judging, and after the flight was over, I wished I had written something else. I wrote what I considered an objective description of the flavour I perceived (and it wasn't the spice the beer was said to contain). What I wrote was not derogatory toward the brewer, but neither did the description of my perception have a positive connotation. Compounding my embarrassment was that the other two judges simply loved the beer and scored it very high, so much that I conceded to th em when they wanted to give it an award. One of them thought I was simply crazy that I found the beer undrinkable. I was just getting over a cold and/or allergy symptoms, and although I had done okay in judging the more conventional styles earlier and later in the day, I had to assume that it was simply me, either because of my condition or some sensitivity to the ingredient. Would it be better in that kind of (very rare) situation for that judge simply to not submit a scoresheet and just go by the other judge'[s'] sheet?? Now go have a beer, Bob Paolino "Homer, why don't you get one of those hands-free phones? It's the next best thing to paying attention to the road." --Barney, The Simpsons ( ) ASCII ribbon campaign X against HTML e-mail: / \ Friends don't send friends HTML-bloated messages! A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? ********************************************************************** * 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 * **********************************************************************