Subject: Digest for the period 8/6/2007 - 8/7/2007 Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2007 01:02:01 -0400 Table of contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Final Call for Judges for the Alamo City Cerveza Fest (Jeffrey Glovan) 2. GM Levels (Jon Tobey) 3. "Real" beer (robert paolino) 4. Re: Dead links on the competition schedule (Ed Westemeier) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jeffrey Glovan Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 00:33:14 -0500 Subject: Final Call for Judges for the Alamo City Cerveza Fest The Alamo City Cerveza Fest happens this weekend (Aug. 10 and 11) in San Antonio, and judges and stewards are still needed for this spectacular event. The ACCF has more than DOUBLED in size in only its second year (up to 280 entries from 120 last year), and we really need your support. Please go to HYPERLINK "http://www.sabeergroup.org/accfjudge.html"http://www.sabeergroup.org/ac cfjudge.html to sign up. Cheers! Jeffrey R. Glovan Helotes, TX Homebrewing since 1994. BJCP Certified since 2007. Raising hell since 1973. No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.10.8/906 - Release Date: 7/17/2007 6:30 PM No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.11.6/938 - Release Date: 8/5/2007 4:16 PM ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jon Tobey Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2007 23:45:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: GM Levels Gee Tom, I tried to reply, but I guess I didn't make the grade with my answer. Jon Tobey Ideastream 425-373-6064 "Battles are won by the remnants of armies." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: robert paolino Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 01:51:07 -0500 Subject: "Real" beer Tom Schmidlin wrote: > Also, I've raised this before but can we please do something about the > "Purpose if the BJCP"? My main objection is with the statement > "promote . . . the appreciation of real beer". Since real beer is > undefined, not just in the context of the study guide but in general, > this doesn't make sense to me. I know we don't mean strictly real ale > in the CAMRA sense, and we're not leaving out Bud/Miller/Coors because > we have Category 1 for them. > > So what do we mean by "real beer"? It implies there is some beer that > is not "real" - what are these fake beers? Near beer? Alco-pops? > What about mead and cider, where do they fit in the purpose of the > BJCP?----- ...and > Now, as for the purpose of the BJCP . . . am I the only one bothered by > this? I think it would be easily solved by dropping the word "real" so it > reads "the appreciation of beer". No, I'm not bothered by using the "real beer" terminology at all, and especially not in the context of the other two elements of the stated purpose: 1) to promote beer literacy and 2) appreciation of real beer 3) to recognize beer tasting and evaluation skills. I'm putting mead and cider aside for this purpose (though there are disagreements on how to deal with them in competitions, namely whether they go in the "beer" best of show or not, and, since they are non-grain based, except braggot, how do we decide to draw the line between apple and honey "wines" from more "traditional" grape and other fruit wines?? ...except that there are cultural distinctions that people have decided make cider/perry and mead more closely connected to beer than to "wine." Hmmm, perhaps we shouldn't go there right now). Without going into this at too much length, fundamentally, I think the appropriateness of the "real" beer terminology is culturally based. Although we do have a category for the styles exemplified by the major products of A-B, SABMiller, MolsonCoors, et cetera, the category is acknowledged because they are fermented grain products with at least some grain character (to be distinguished from alcopops, which are malt-based but only as a cheap and lower-taxed way to produce a colourless/flavourless alcohol to which other flavours can be added) and can be evaluated for their technical characteristics. (OTOH, if I never had to judge another standard/premium American lager, I wouldn't be heartbroken. And admit it, 90+% of you prefer not to do them either ;-) ) But from a cultural perspective, these products ARE different from what most of us in this group think of as "beer," not only in the flavour characteristics (very low malt, very low hops...), but in how they are marketed/promoted. Mega swillseners/nilseners are marketed with "lifestyle" images and consumed largely as "alcohol-delivery systems." Not to sound too "beer-snobbish" about it, the biggest market for these mass market beverages is for getting a buzz and for people who have not (yet?) acquired a taste for more complex and/or assertive "beer" flavours. I know it sounds awfully "incorrect" to express this, but a lot of people really do want to drink to get a little (or a lot of) buzz without having to taste very much. For some of these people, club soda with alcohol (or, ummmm, "malternatives"/alcopops to get the alcohol while masking it and making it slammable) would accomplish the same purpose. That all sounds extreme, and I've overstated it to make the point. And it's not that we in this group don't every now and then enjoy some of the more pleasant effects of alcohol, too, but we also like to distinguish malt, hop, and yeast characteristics of a diversity of beers; it's not ALL about the alcohol. It's that diversity of styles and flavours where the beer literacy and beer appreciation comes in--that "beer" is not a largely uniform WonderBread/Velveeta product with as little flavour as possible. We're trying to educate people that "beer" means a lot more than what is mass-marketed out there. And as much as most of us in this group really would prefer not to judge American light lagers, many will readily admit to enjoying one every now and then in certain situations, although those people would likely bemoan what has happened to beers of that style compared to what our parents or grandparents supposedly enjoyed before the blandification of North American lagers helped trigger the craft beer revolution. (Consider the homebrewing craze of several years ago for pre-Prohibition lagers or Classic American Pilseners, which recognised the initial adaptation of European light lager styles to the North American context, as distinct from how the style has devolved to the BudLight/MolsonCoors Light/SABMillerLite of today.) Beer literacy implies an educational function (to a broader public), as do evaluation skills (primarily of judges, but also something of a more public educational function). When we say "real" beer, we are speaking of products that exhibit a wide range of variety, that showcase rather than hide the characteristics of the ingredients, and that are appreciated as legitimate food products rather than a "lifestyle" image and a buzz (not that there aren't images connoted by craft beer marketing, too, but one that will include the idea that the beer tastes like something other than "mountain spring water." You know, it's late and I don't know if I'm doing a very good job of getting my point across. Maybe it all sounds like babble (from tiredness, not from drinking beer, although I really wish I *could* have one about now ;-) ) or maybe my point really does come through. In short, the technical aspect gets you only so far, and you have to look at the cultural context of our mission. We have this fantastic variety of beer in North America today *because* people recognised that there is a difference between real beer and the increasingly bland and indistinct crap the mass-market guys were selling and their approach to selling it. What we have is a distinctly different approach to a hopped fermented malt beverage, and whether you're a Bill Metzger talking about being a "craft beer revolutionary" or the Alstroms speaking of "respect(ing) beer," it's very different from what the marketing departments at AB, SABMiller, and MolsonCoors have been promoting. Anyway, time for me to end this brief little break and to get back to educating/promoting about beer as I get back to my all-nighter (to make a publication deadline) in completing one of my parts of our own little bit of beer education for next Saturday's celebration and appreciation of 108 brewers and 500+ beers to be presented to some 5,000 very happy people. -- Now go have a (real) beer, Bob Paolino "Are Canadians just Americans who carry hockey sticks instead of guns, or is there more to it than that?" --"This Canadian Existence" Wisconsin Public Radio ( ) 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? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ed Westemeier Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 07:36:20 -0400 Subject: Re: Dead links on the competition schedule Dick, I'm not aware of any dead links on the BJCP website, so it's possible you have a browser problem. In any case, the competition links are exactly what is submitted by the person registering the competition. If you find one that doesn't work, it should be trivial to use a search engine to find that club's website and a list of contacts. At least, that's what I would do. However, the list of BJCP contacts (from our home page) says that for website issues, the Communication Director is the person to ask. Ed Westemeier communication_director`at`bjcp.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ***** Important Subscriber Information ***** To post a message to JudgeNet, send it to judge`at`synchro.com. 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