Subject: Digest for the period 3/23/2004 - 3/24/2004 Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 01:01:47 -0500 Table of contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. AHA 1st Round-Northeast-Call for Judges & Stewards (Douglas Brainard) 2. Re: Rote memorization and exam score (BillPierce`at`aol.com) 3. "Language is a virus," exam scoring, imperfect measures (re-sent) (Bob Paolino) 4. National Homebrew Competition (Gary Glass) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Douglas Brainard Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 07:23:17 -0500 Subject: AHA 1st Round-Northeast-Call for Judges & Stewards Northeast - NHC 1st Round Call for Judges & Stewards Judging for the Northeast region (CT, MA, ME, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VT) of the NHC 1st Round will be held once again at Rohrbach Brewing Co. (3859 Buffalo Rd, Rochester, NY 14624). Judging sessions are scheduled for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, April 23-25. Both judges and stewards (experienced or not) are needed. Sessions will begin promptly at 6:00PM on Friday, 9:00AM and 1:00PM on Saturday and Sunday. Stewards should arrive 45 minutes early to help get things set up. Judges should plan to arrive 30 minutes early for sign-in, refreshments, and judging assignments. Interested judges and stewards can contact the Judge Coordinator, Doug Brainard (dbrainar`at`rochester.rr.com, daytime phone 585-621-1258). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: BillPierce`at`aol.com Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 10:31:20 EST Subject: Re: Rote memorization and exam score Scott Bickham raises some interesting (and to me important) issues in his response to Mark Vernon's comment that the exam requires considerable rote memorization in order to achieve the scores necessary for National or Master rank. In my mind Scott (and I intend no offense here) demonstrates the scientist's bias for the quantitative over the qualitative and for numbers over words. Some of us come from a less scientific and more verbal background. For example (my graduate degree is in English and I have worked as a writer), I tend to describe an Oktoberfest as a medium to dark amber beer of moderate gravity and not excessive bitterness, with the emphasis on malt in the flavor profile. That's not quite the same as saying the color should be 7-14 SRM, the O.G. 1.050-1.064 and the bittering 20-30 IBUs. Yet in my mind I have described the beer adequately and more in keeping with my own way of thinking. Scientists frequently decry the lack of precision in the world, artists the lack of grace and excessive specificity. I suppose my point is that the BJCP exam should be able to accommodate people of both persuasions and not penalize them in terms of the score. I continue to refer to the Style Chart as a shorthand guide to the numbers; what I remember about a beer is its more qualitative distinctions. I don't believe that makes me any more or less correct than Scott. Brew on! -- Bill Pierce Cellar Door Homebrewery Burlington, Ontario ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bob Paolino Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 15:01:07 -0500 Subject: "Language is a virus," exam scoring, imperfect measures (re-sent) No, this isn't going to be about Laurie Anderson, but about the continued use of the line "alternate path to Master." That line biases the discussion in favour of the status quo partisans, some of whom argue that this so-called "alternate path" would "cheapen" the rank or who say that those who would advance by judging more frequently are somehow taking the "easy" route. What people are actually talking about is re-structuring the advancement ladder. EACH different combination of exam and judging experience would be an alternative to the other; the system would no longer have ONE standard with a proposal along the lines of the discussion in this forum being "the alternate path," but two equally respectable ways of getting there. Over the weekend, I was judging at the Drunk Monk Competition in Aurora (great job, folks!) and had a split flight alongside Gordon Strong. His judging partner had been a professional brewer who knows his beer, but didn't have a lot of experience judging. I overheard the conversation on some wide discrepancies in their scoring, and Gordon's knowledgeable, patient, and respectful explanation of the style characteristics and why the beer, though enjoyable, was off the mark for the style was an eloquent indication of why Gordon is a master rank judge. It's the same thing I try to do when I am judging with a relatively new judge, but I wonder how confident I would be doing the same thing with a professional brewer (but inexperienced judge) as judging partner. I'm perfectly content to be a national judge, just as I was perfectly content to be a recognised-forever judge. (I re-took the exam when our club offered it again, years after I had first taken it; I would doubt I would have re-taken had the club not assembled a class of people interested in writing the exam.) I honestly don't think I wrote a 90+ exam; as I saw how time was running short, I rushed through and scribbled out outlines of the remaining questions to show I knew the essential points, but not displaying the thoroughness that a less frenetically and more carefully composed response would have been. I'm sure others have had a similar exam-taking experience. In that respect, national rather than master is exactly the rank I should have. On the other hand, I was surprised to learn that some judges I know are master judges. They are fully competent and knowledgable judges, but (and no disrespect intended) not appreciably different in judging competence than many national judges I know. As several people have already noted in this discussion, the difference between national and master is a vast grey area, and the **ONLY** thing that sets some of those master judges apart from many national judges is a few exam points. I think that's the sort of thing the various proposals are trying to address. Maybe we do also want to expand the determination of rankings beyond exam scores and judging experience. Jeremy Bergsman's idea of offering educational activities as part of the program is an exciting one. Maybe the current "path" to master is too easy. If you get a good exam score, that's great, but maybe it ought to take a lot more than 40 experience points to reach master (and probably also a lot more than 20 to reach national). (Whooops! I bet I'd be opening a gusher to suggest that kind of change to the status quo.) And if you want to include the other option of reaching national with 70 and master with 80, yeah, it ought to take still more additional experience and/or educational activity to do it. NEITHER "path" should be "easy" to get to the higher ranks. ...and others go on to critique the administration and scoring of the tasting portion of the exam (my reply follows): ---- Bill Wible: > proctor giving it, (who decides on the beers and also scores them with > you. We've had NUMEROUS complaints on that front, where a proctor has > given one of his own beers as a test beer, rated it highly, and it > wasn't that good of a beer. ---- Jeremy Bergsman: This is not supposed to be how it works. But I agree that the current system is not sufficiently stringent: those tasting the beer as proctors should have ZERO knowledge of the beer other than what the examinees have and should not be allowed to confer. This has been the case at the exams I have participated in. ---- John Tull: Who has been administering exams in your area? If your proctor is also providing beer, you are not receiving the exam according to how it was designed to be administered. Under no circumstance should a proctor provide the administrator with beers. The proctors are specifically to have no more knowledge about the beer being served than any of the examinees. Proctors are to evaluate beers independently with no capability of revising their sheets. If it has been done in a manner as you described, you need to report this incident, and the administrator of the exam should not be allowed to administer in the future. ---- Greg Lorton: On the tasting side, I think a problem that needs to be overcome is the quality control aspects of it, particularly by the proctors. I graded an exam not too long ago where the proctors were Certified judges and the exam scores of several examinees were at the National and Master level. A number of the examinees identified flaws that the person who prepared the beers said were there, but that the proctors missed. As a second issue on the tasting, I believe that the proctors should provide two scores for each beer, one based on their individual evaluations, and one that reflects the score after they have discussed the beers. I believe this would better address insensitivities that the proctors may have to certain characteristics (e.g., I am pretty insensitive to diacetyl, and find it appealing at levels that are obnoxious to judges who are sensitive to it). In the exam that I recently graded, one proctor gave a beer a 30, while the other gave it a 45. Which score do you use to compare with the examinees? (the average, or just one of the two) Most of the examinees gave the beer scores that centered around the 30. It is difficult for an examinee to get a good tasting score if there is wide variability in the scores and comments provided by the proctors. It's hard to decide who's right! The guidelines presented in an earlier JudgeNet for preparing the beers for the exam should be followed (i.e, an exemplary example of the style; a good beer, but out of style; a doctored beer; etc.) Having high level, experience judges serve as proctors seems necessary, but apparently isn't always doable. ---- reply: Scoring of the tasting portion of the exam has its problems as these people have noted and as I found in my exam re-take. One improvement should be that the people grading the exam be provided with information about what beers were presented to the examinees, because the proctors' scoresheets aren't infallible. One of the proctors for my exam is a fantastic homebrewer, is generally very perceptive about beer and has a very gold palate, but (and I hate to say it) a terrible judge. He has long since stopped judging regularly, having mostly lost interest in that aspect of the hobby and when he does judge (something I noticed even when I was new to judging and judged with him) turns in scoresheets with one- or two-word comments on each section of the scoresheet. On a couple of the exam beers, my scores were very different from the proctors' and the other examinees' and, as a consequence, I received in my exam report a "novice" (I think that was the word used) level designation for my numerical scoring on my tasting exam, even though just about every other dimension was evaluated as “national” level (or higher??) What were those beers? As we found out afterward, we had a homebrew and three commercial beers. The homebrew had some minor problems (don't know if doctored to that condition or not) and was given to us (if I recall correctly) as an American Amber. The other beers were presented to us to judge as a weizen, a dry stout, and a German Pilsener. The problem is that I found the last two to be significantly different from the stated style, and I scored them down appropriately. For the "dry stout" I noted that it almost bordered on Imperial (as it turned out a bit of an exaggeration, but that's what I said) and would have scored higher as a foreign style. The "German Pilsener" was not only skunked (intentional or not, I don't know) but lacked the appropriate malt and hop character. What were the beers? Bell's Stout (6.5% alcohol... well above that of a dry stout) and Heineken (hardly a German Pilsener) I scored them lower than the proctors and the other examinees for style considerations and got dinged for it. Bell's Stout is a wonderful beer and in the right category would score high. I scored it as being out of style and the proctors did not. Sometimes the proctors are just wrong, and the exam graders need a way to know that when possible. The exam graders can't know how "accurate" a proctor's score is, but iat least when commercial beers are used they should know what they were to be able to verify who's "right" when there are big discrepancies in scoring. also.... John C.Tull: You do not become a National until you have had at least 10 points of judging experience. This generally represents at least 10 competitions. Arguably, the tasting skills of that person will improve considerably after judging 10 competitions, given that there are judges as good or better than that person on each panel. So National still has to be earned from some degree of experience regardless of what the score on the exam is after entering the program. That's 20 points (unless what you mean is that at least half of the 20 points need to be from judging rather than organising, but organiser points involve only a very small proportion of the membership). 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 * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gary Glass Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 16:08:42 -0700 Subject: National Homebrew Competition The world's largest and most prestigious homebrew competition, the AHA's National Homebrew Competition, is rapidly approaching. Don't miss your opportunity to pit your brews against the best homebrews from around the globe. Do you have what it takes to be named Homebrewer, Meadmaker, or Cidermaker of the Year, or to take home the granddaddy of homebrew awards, the AHA Ninkasi Award? Entry Deadline: April 7-16 We're expecting around 3800 entries this year. This year's competition will also include new and better prizes. See www.beertown.org/events/nhc/index.html for complete details. Judges & Stewards, WE NEED YOU! Interested in judging or stewarding for the National Homebrew Competition? Check out www.beertown.org/events/nhc/judging.html for judge coordinator contact info for your region. First Round Regional judging sites include: San Diego, CA Canoga Park, CA Portland, OR Seattle, WA Denver, CO Basehor, KS Houston, TX Chicago, IL Westlake, OH Rochester, NY Rhinebeck, NY (Cider) This year's Canadian NHC qualifier is the Ales Home Brew Open in Regina, SK, see www.alesclub.com. Second Round judging and awards ceremony will take place at the AHA National Homebrewers Conference in Las Vegas June 17-19, www.beertown.org/events/hbc/index.html. NOTE: Entries submitted to a region other than your own will be disqualified (except for NHC Site Directors and Judge Coordinators who are required to submit their entries to regions other than their own). Good Luck! Gary Glass Project Coordinator/NHC Director American Homebrewers Association 888-U-CAN-BREW (303) 447-0816 x 121 gary`at`aob.org www.beertown.org --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.634 / Virus Database: 406 - Release Date: 3/18/2004 =20 ********************************************************************** * 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 3/23/2004 - 3/24/2004 Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 01:01:47 -0500 Table of contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. AHA 1st Round-Northeast-Call for Judges & Stewards (Douglas Brainard) 2. Re: Rote memorization and exam score (BillPierce`at`aol.com) 3. "Language is a virus," exam scoring, imperfect measures (re-sent) (Bob Paolino) 4. National Homebrew Competition (Gary Glass) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Douglas Brainard Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 07:23:17 -0500 Subject: AHA 1st Round-Northeast-Call for Judges & Stewards Northeast - NHC 1st Round Call for Judges & Stewards Judging for the Northeast region (CT, MA, ME, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VT) of the NHC 1st Round will be held once again at Rohrbach Brewing Co. (3859 Buffalo Rd, Rochester, NY 14624). Judging sessions are scheduled for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, April 23-25. Both judges and stewards (experienced or not) are needed. Sessions will begin promptly at 6:00PM on Friday, 9:00AM and 1:00PM on Saturday and Sunday. Stewards should arrive 45 minutes early to help get things set up. Judges should plan to arrive 30 minutes early for sign-in, refreshments, and judging assignments. Interested judges and stewards can contact the Judge Coordinator, Doug Brainard (dbrainar`at`rochester.rr.com, daytime phone 585-621-1258). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: BillPierce`at`aol.com Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 10:31:20 EST Subject: Re: Rote memorization and exam score Scott Bickham raises some interesting (and to me important) issues in his response to Mark Vernon's comment that the exam requires considerable rote memorization in order to achieve the scores necessary for National or Master rank. In my mind Scott (and I intend no offense here) demonstrates the scientist's bias for the quantitative over the qualitative and for numbers over words. Some of us come from a less scientific and more verbal background. For example (my graduate degree is in English and I have worked as a writer), I tend to describe an Oktoberfest as a medium to dark amber beer of moderate gravity and not excessive bitterness, with the emphasis on malt in the flavor profile. That's not quite the same as saying the color should be 7-14 SRM, the O.G. 1.050-1.064 and the bittering 20-30 IBUs. Yet in my mind I have described the beer adequately and more in keeping with my own way of thinking. Scientists frequently decry the lack of precision in the world, artists the lack of grace and excessive specificity. I suppose my point is that the BJCP exam should be able to accommodate people of both persuasions and not penalize them in terms of the score. I continue to refer to the Style Chart as a shorthand guide to the numbers; what I remember about a beer is its more qualitative distinctions. I don't believe that makes me any more or less correct than Scott. Brew on! -- Bill Pierce Cellar Door Homebrewery Burlington, Ontario ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bob Paolino Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 15:01:07 -0500 Subject: "Language is a virus," exam scoring, imperfect measures (re-sent) No, this isn't going to be about Laurie Anderson, but about the continued use of the line "alternate path to Master." That line biases the discussion in favour of the status quo partisans, some of whom argue that this so-called "alternate path" would "cheapen" the rank or who say that those who would advance by judging more frequently are somehow taking the "easy" route. What people are actually talking about is re-structuring the advancement ladder. EACH different combination of exam and judging experience would be an alternative to the other; the system would no longer have ONE standard with a proposal along the lines of the discussion in this forum being "the alternate path," but two equally respectable ways of getting there. Over the weekend, I was judging at the Drunk Monk Competition in Aurora (great job, folks!) and had a split flight alongside Gordon Strong. His judging partner had been a professional brewer who knows his beer, but didn't have a lot of experience judging. I overheard the conversation on some wide discrepancies in their scoring, and Gordon's knowledgeable, patient, and respectful explanation of the style characteristics and why the beer, though enjoyable, was off the mark for the style was an eloquent indication of why Gordon is a master rank judge. It's the same thing I try to do when I am judging with a relatively new judge, but I wonder how confident I would be doing the same thing with a professional brewer (but inexperienced judge) as judging partner. I'm perfectly content to be a national judge, just as I was perfectly content to be a recognised-forever judge. (I re-took the exam when our club offered it again, years after I had first taken it; I would doubt I would have re-taken had the club not assembled a class of people interested in writing the exam.) I honestly don't think I wrote a 90+ exam; as I saw how time was running short, I rushed through and scribbled out outlines of the remaining questions to show I knew the essential points, but not displaying the thoroughness that a less frenetically and more carefully composed response would have been. I'm sure others have had a similar exam-taking experience. In that respect, national rather than master is exactly the rank I should have. On the other hand, I was surprised to learn that some judges I know are master judges. They are fully competent and knowledgable judges, but (and no disrespect intended) not appreciably different in judging competence than many national judges I know. As several people have already noted in this discussion, the difference between national and master is a vast grey area, and the **ONLY** thing that sets some of those master judges apart from many national judges is a few exam points. I think that's the sort of thing the various proposals are trying to address. Maybe we do also want to expand the determination of rankings beyond exam scores and judging experience. Jeremy Bergsman's idea of offering educational activities as part of the program is an exciting one. Maybe the current "path" to master is too easy. If you get a good exam score, that's great, but maybe it ought to take a lot more than 40 experience points to reach master (and probably also a lot more than 20 to reach national). (Whooops! I bet I'd be opening a gusher to suggest that kind of change to the status quo.) And if you want to include the other option of reaching national with 70 and master with 80, yeah, it ought to take still more additional experience and/or educational activity to do it. NEITHER "path" should be "easy" to get to the higher ranks. ...and others go on to critique the administration and scoring of the tasting portion of the exam (my reply follows): ---- Bill Wible: > proctor giving it, (who decides on the beers and also scores them with > you. We've had NUMEROUS complaints on that front, where a proctor has > given one of his own beers as a test beer, rated it highly, and it > wasn't that good of a beer. ---- Jeremy Bergsman: This is not supposed to be how it works. But I agree that the current system is not sufficiently stringent: those tasting the beer as proctors should have ZERO knowledge of the beer other than what the examinees have and should not be allowed to confer. This has been the case at the exams I have participated in. ---- John Tull: Who has been administering exams in your area? If your proctor is also providing beer, you are not receiving the exam according to how it was designed to be administered. Under no circumstance should a proctor provide the administrator with beers. The proctors are specifically to have no more knowledge about the beer being served than any of the examinees. Proctors are to evaluate beers independently with no capability of revising their sheets. If it has been done in a manner as you described, you need to report this incident, and the administrator of the exam should not be allowed to administer in the future. ---- Greg Lorton: On the tasting side, I think a problem that needs to be overcome is the quality control aspects of it, particularly by the proctors. I graded an exam not too long ago where the proctors were Certified judges and the exam scores of several examinees were at the National and Master level. A number of the examinees identified flaws that the person who prepared the beers said were there, but that the proctors missed. As a second issue on the tasting, I believe that the proctors should provide two scores for each beer, one based on their individual evaluations, and one that reflects the score after they have discussed the beers. I believe this would better address insensitivities that the proctors may have to certain characteristics (e.g., I am pretty insensitive to diacetyl, and find it appealing at levels that are obnoxious to judges who are sensitive to it). In the exam that I recently graded, one proctor gave a beer a 30, while the other gave it a 45. Which score do you use to compare with the examinees? (the average, or just one of the two) Most of the examinees gave the beer scores that centered around the 30. It is difficult for an examinee to get a good tasting score if there is wide variability in the scores and comments provided by the proctors. It's hard to decide who's right! The guidelines presented in an earlier JudgeNet for preparing the beers for the exam should be followed (i.e, an exemplary example of the style; a good beer, but out of style; a doctored beer; etc.) Having high level, experience judges serve as proctors seems necessary, but apparently isn't always doable. ---- reply: Scoring of the tasting portion of the exam has its problems as these people have noted and as I found in my exam re-take. One improvement should be that the people grading the exam be provided with information about what beers were presented to the examinees, because the proctors' scoresheets aren't infallible. One of the proctors for my exam is a fantastic homebrewer, is generally very perceptive about beer and has a very gold palate, but (and I hate to say it) a terrible judge. He has long since stopped judging regularly, having mostly lost interest in that aspect of the hobby and when he does judge (something I noticed even when I was new to judging and judged with him) turns in scoresheets with one- or two-word comments on each section of the scoresheet. On a couple of the exam beers, my scores were very different from the proctors' and the other examinees' and, as a consequence, I received in my exam report a "novice" (I think that was the word used) level designation for my numerical scoring on my tasting exam, even though just about every other dimension was evaluated as “national” level (or higher??) What were those beers? As we found out afterward, we had a homebrew and three commercial beers. The homebrew had some minor problems (don't know if doctored to that condition or not) and was given to us (if I recall correctly) as an American Amber. The other beers were presented to us to judge as a weizen, a dry stout, and a German Pilsener. The problem is that I found the last two to be significantly different from the stated style, and I scored them down appropriately. For the "dry stout" I noted that it almost bordered on Imperial (as it turned out a bit of an exaggeration, but that's what I said) and would have scored higher as a foreign style. The "German Pilsener" was not only skunked (intentional or not, I don't know) but lacked the appropriate malt and hop character. What were the beers? Bell's Stout (6.5% alcohol... well above that of a dry stout) and Heineken (hardly a German Pilsener) I scored them lower than the proctors and the other examinees for style considerations and got dinged for it. Bell's Stout is a wonderful beer and in the right category would score high. I scored it as being out of style and the proctors did not. Sometimes the proctors are just wrong, and the exam graders need a way to know that when possible. The exam graders can't know how "accurate" a proctor's score is, but iat least when commercial beers are used they should know what they were to be able to verify who's "right" when there are big discrepancies in scoring. also.... John C.Tull: You do not become a National until you have had at least 10 points of judging experience. This generally represents at least 10 competitions. Arguably, the tasting skills of that person will improve considerably after judging 10 competitions, given that there are judges as good or better than that person on each panel. So National still has to be earned from some degree of experience regardless of what the score on the exam is after entering the program. That's 20 points (unless what you mean is that at least half of the 20 points need to be from judging rather than organising, but organiser points involve only a very small proportion of the membership). 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 * ********************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gary Glass Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 16:08:42 -0700 Subject: National Homebrew Competition The world's largest and most prestigious homebrew competition, the AHA's National Homebrew Competition, is rapidly approaching. Don't miss your opportunity to pit your brews against the best homebrews from around the globe. Do you have what it takes to be named Homebrewer, Meadmaker, or Cidermaker of the Year, or to take home the granddaddy of homebrew awards, the AHA Ninkasi Award? Entry Deadline: April 7-16 We're expecting around 3800 entries this year. This year's competition will also include new and better prizes. See www.beertown.org/events/nhc/index.html for complete details. Judges & Stewards, WE NEED YOU! Interested in judging or stewarding for the National Homebrew Competition? Check out www.beertown.org/events/nhc/judging.html for judge coordinator contact info for your region. First Round Regional judging sites include: San Diego, CA Canoga Park, CA Portland, OR Seattle, WA Denver, CO Basehor, KS Houston, TX Chicago, IL Westlake, OH Rochester, NY Rhinebeck, NY (Cider) This year's Canadian NHC qualifier is the Ales Home Brew Open in Regina, SK, see www.alesclub.com. Second Round judging and awards ceremony will take place at the AHA National Homebrewers Conference in Las Vegas June 17-19, www.beertown.org/events/hbc/index.html. NOTE: Entries submitted to a region other than your own will be disqualified (except for NHC Site Directors and Judge Coordinators who are required to submit their entries to regions other than their own). Good Luck! Gary Glass Project Coordinator/NHC Director American Homebrewers Association 888-U-CAN-BREW (303) 447-0816 x 121 gary`at`aob.org www.beertown.org --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.634 / Virus Database: 406 - Release Date: 3/18/2004 =20 ********************************************************************** * 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 * **********************************************************************