Subject: Digest for the period 5/19/2004 - 5/20/2004 Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 01:02:14 -0400 Table of contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Mead Guidelines in BJCP (David Craft) 2. RE: competition logistics (Bryan L. Gros) 3. competition logistics (Bill Wible) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Craft Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 07:44:30 -0400 Subject: Mead Guidelines in BJCP My experience with mead judging at BJCP contests has been poor at best. Mishandled bottles with comments like, "carbonated"? It was entered as a sparkling mead or "what fruit is this"? They should be told, not all fruits are easy to tell right off.......... Comments like oxidation and sherry flavors that came with a prickly pear mead that no one knew the fruit......... or the most common judging with almost no comments or ways to improve an average mead. I have stopped entering my meads in beer contests for the most part. Mead should be left out of the BJCP main curriculum. Judges who want to take separate test for meads would do so at a different time. Mead is not even on the exam but is in the program, so that any BJCP judge could claim to judge meads with really no knowledge or training. If the BJCP is serious about mead it should develop a parallel cirrocumulus and test judges on meads, characteristics and methods. I would recommend a test once a year in places throughout the country where the proctors or volunteers bring good meads in to be judged. A judge could be "certified" just in mead or for beer or both. Beer can be painfully obvious in how good or bad it is because we have been drinking it for so long. Most people don't know what good or bad mead is........... The BJCP is a great organization, but they are doing no one any favor by how they handle, or really don't handle meads in judging. David B. Craft Club Secretary Battleground Brewers Guild Crow Hill Brewery and Meadery Greensboro, NC ********************************************************************** * 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: Bryan L. Gros Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 07:54:32 -0700 Subject: RE: competition logistics Thanks to all who responded to my questions, both on and off the list. Like Mike, I will offer to help update the BJCP competition organizers guide. I asked about views on advertising and lumping styles together, having organized our club's main competition for the last five or six years. We have always set our categories ahead of time, based on expected entries. Traditionally, we've awarded prizes in eight categories. Over the years, entries have been pretty constant, which surprises me. I don't know about the first eight years or so, but the last ten years we've typically received between 75 and 100 beers. Couple years getting close to 120, but those were exceptions. 100 is a pretty manageable number. We've attempted to increase entries by accepting more styles in our eight categories, and it somewhat works. Two categories are lagers, five categories are ales, and one for mead and/or specialties. The advantage of fixing things ahead of time is you know how many prizes and ribbons to buy (so you can order ahead of time), and you know how many judges you need: 24, if you want 3 per category. Any large categories can be narrowed down with preliminary judging prior to the final judging day. The disadvantage is you may well have a category which gets only 5 entries (say, light lagers) and another category which gets 22 entries (say, IPA). Not really a disadvantage: most entrants know styles which tend to get more entries over others. I mean around here, only the largest competitions get several scottish ales, or brown porters, or American wheat beers, Premium lagers, etc. Historically, about 25% of our entries are IPA or APA. So I was interested to hear that most of you just take in the entries and then group them into ribbon categories. I was also interested to read that panels tend to be ten to fourteen beers. As a judge, fourteen is a bit much. I shoot for flights of 8 to 11 or 12. But that is more personal preference. It is not worth doing preliminary judging on a group of 13 beers to get it down to 10. Bryan Gros bgros`at`aggienetwork.com Oakland, CA Draught Board Homebrew Club http://www.draughtboard.org ********************************************************************** * 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: Bill Wible Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 13:32:59 -0400 Subject: competition logistics Dave, I agree with absolutely everything you said, except for one thing: I think lagers and ales should NEVER be combined in the same category. Never. As in NOT EVER. Its not fair. And there's no reason to have to. There are enough lager categories that you could lump lagers with other lagers, and plenty of ale categories to keep ales with ales. That's my feeling. 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 * ********************************************************************** Subject: Digest for the period 5/19/2004 - 5/20/2004 Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 01:02:14 -0400 Table of contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Mead Guidelines in BJCP (David Craft) 2. RE: competition logistics (Bryan L. Gros) 3. competition logistics (Bill Wible) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Craft Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 07:44:30 -0400 Subject: Mead Guidelines in BJCP My experience with mead judging at BJCP contests has been poor at best. Mishandled bottles with comments like, "carbonated"? It was entered as a sparkling mead or "what fruit is this"? They should be told, not all fruits are easy to tell right off.......... Comments like oxidation and sherry flavors that came with a prickly pear mead that no one knew the fruit......... or the most common judging with almost no comments or ways to improve an average mead. I have stopped entering my meads in beer contests for the most part. Mead should be left out of the BJCP main curriculum. Judges who want to take separate test for meads would do so at a different time. Mead is not even on the exam but is in the program, so that any BJCP judge could claim to judge meads with really no knowledge or training. If the BJCP is serious about mead it should develop a parallel cirrocumulus and test judges on meads, characteristics and methods. I would recommend a test once a year in places throughout the country where the proctors or volunteers bring good meads in to be judged. A judge could be "certified" just in mead or for beer or both. Beer can be painfully obvious in how good or bad it is because we have been drinking it for so long. Most people don't know what good or bad mead is........... The BJCP is a great organization, but they are doing no one any favor by how they handle, or really don't handle meads in judging. David B. Craft Club Secretary Battleground Brewers Guild Crow Hill Brewery and Meadery Greensboro, NC ********************************************************************** * 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: Bryan L. Gros Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 07:54:32 -0700 Subject: RE: competition logistics Thanks to all who responded to my questions, both on and off the list. Like Mike, I will offer to help update the BJCP competition organizers guide. I asked about views on advertising and lumping styles together, having organized our club's main competition for the last five or six years. We have always set our categories ahead of time, based on expected entries. Traditionally, we've awarded prizes in eight categories. Over the years, entries have been pretty constant, which surprises me. I don't know about the first eight years or so, but the last ten years we've typically received between 75 and 100 beers. Couple years getting close to 120, but those were exceptions. 100 is a pretty manageable number. We've attempted to increase entries by accepting more styles in our eight categories, and it somewhat works. Two categories are lagers, five categories are ales, and one for mead and/or specialties. The advantage of fixing things ahead of time is you know how many prizes and ribbons to buy (so you can order ahead of time), and you know how many judges you need: 24, if you want 3 per category. Any large categories can be narrowed down with preliminary judging prior to the final judging day. The disadvantage is you may well have a category which gets only 5 entries (say, light lagers) and another category which gets 22 entries (say, IPA). Not really a disadvantage: most entrants know styles which tend to get more entries over others. I mean around here, only the largest competitions get several scottish ales, or brown porters, or American wheat beers, Premium lagers, etc. Historically, about 25% of our entries are IPA or APA. So I was interested to hear that most of you just take in the entries and then group them into ribbon categories. I was also interested to read that panels tend to be ten to fourteen beers. As a judge, fourteen is a bit much. I shoot for flights of 8 to 11 or 12. But that is more personal preference. It is not worth doing preliminary judging on a group of 13 beers to get it down to 10. Bryan Gros bgros`at`aggienetwork.com Oakland, CA Draught Board Homebrew Club http://www.draughtboard.org ********************************************************************** * 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: Bill Wible Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 13:32:59 -0400 Subject: competition logistics Dave, I agree with absolutely everything you said, except for one thing: I think lagers and ales should NEVER be combined in the same category. Never. As in NOT EVER. Its not fair. And there's no reason to have to. There are enough lager categories that you could lump lagers with other lagers, and plenty of ale categories to keep ales with ales. That's my feeling. 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 * **********************************************************************