Subject: Digest for the period 8/8/2007 - 8/9/2007 Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2007 01:03:06 -0400 Table of contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Missing competition organizer (David Houseman) 2. Real Beer (Denis Barsalo) 3. RE: "Real" (Kevin Pratt) 4. Re: Making it real (MeadGuild`at`aol.com) 5. Response to Tom Schmidlin's post about "real beer" and the mission statement. (Lyle C. Brown) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Houseman Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2007 20:50:58 -0400 Subject: Missing competition organizer Perhaps someone that subscribes to this list can help locate Jeff Parry who was the organizer of the 10th Annual New England Homebrewers Jamboree, held 9/9/2006 in West Campton, NH. The BJCP has not received the organizer report (the only one missing from 2006) and I cannot reach Jeff. Anyone who judged this competition has a vested interest in getting an organizer report filed so that they will receive credit for their efforts and so that we can process a future request for this competition. Just for completeness we need still have missing organizer reports for the following old competitions: 9/18/2004 Dearborn Oktoberfest Homebrewing Competition, Dearborn, MI, Scott Smith 8/29/2004 Brewing in the Hills, Waverly, NY, Tom Koons 8/21/2004 Nebraska State Fair, Frank Sobetski Any help in securing these organizer reports would be appreciated by all concerned. For those of you with delinquent organizer reports in 2007, and you know who you are (or others can check at http://www.bjcp.org/apps/reports/delinquent.php) please get these in as soon as you can. Thanks, David Houseman BJCP Competition Director ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Denis Barsalo Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 06:36:49 -0400 Subject: Real Beer Somehow, I find myself agreeing with everyone so far, that is Linda, Bob and Tom. If we can convince some college "binger" to take a minute and enjoy the flavours available to him in a pint of "real" beer, then the BJCP will have done its job to promoting the appreciation of real beer! I also agree that a pint of well-homebrewed IPA is more "real" than a can of Coors Light - at least to me (and Bob) it is. As much as the word "real" screams to be removed or replaced, I do believe the word beer needs a qualifier. So far, the closest I think we have come is Tom's suggestion that there is a "diversity" within the big world of beers. Denis Barsalo ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kevin Pratt Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 07:14:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: RE: "Real" The case for dropping "real" from the purpose seems to always be tied to the notion of what is/isn't real beer. The implication is that there needs to be a widening of the boundries. However, I've not seen an argument for any beer not already in the guidelines. =0A"Real" beers tend to be defined by ingredients and processes available to home brewers. The sorts of processes that go into making many clearmalts and other alcopops are not part of that reality. Yet, with enough care and time, homebrewers can produce a palateble diet American Lager.... cold filtered, even. =0A _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _____________________________________________________________ http://farechase.yahoo.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: MeadGuild`at`aol.com Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 13:22:47 EDT Subject: Re: Making it real Our colleague John Peed wrote (in part): > Tom's suggestion to drop the word "real" makes sense to me. It > sounds full of implications, none of which make a lot of sense to > me. .... Beer is beer. Does it need an adjective? If there are 'unreal'. beers, 'faux' beers or 'nonalcoholic' beers, they belong in the "Open Category"! And then we have Mead which is unmentioned. So how about .... Nah, let's not go there. Let's keep the stakes low so we can pretend we're a "Faculty Senate" debating the value of a four word on an academic website. At the BJCP it reads: "The purpose of the Beer Judge Certification Program is to promote beer literacy and the appreciation of real beer, and to recognize beer tasting and evaluation skills." If a change is really needed (and I am not saying it is), I support changing "the appreciation of real beer" to "an appreciation of the various styles of beer". Us Mead people can fend for ourselves because we have patience. ;). Dick -- Richard D. Adams, CPA (retired) Moderator: misc.taxes.moderated ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lyle C. Brown Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 19:21:42 -0400 Subject: Response to Tom Schmidlin's post about "real beer" and the mission statement. I agree with most of Tom's points. We can't start excluding specific styles because of lack of popularity within the BJCP. Tom mentions his non-preference for American Wheat beers. I would hazard a guess that many others share this. Should we then exclude American Wheat because a significant percentage of BJCP members don't like the style? What percentage should be the cut off? Can we suggest that if >25% of the members don't like a style we will drop it? How about 50%? Or 10%? I would bet there are a fair number who don't like Lambics, or Flemish Reds. Would anyone even consider dropping those styles? Is there no room in our palates to compare the relative merits (or lack thereof) of Michelob versus Milwaukee's Best versus Heilemann's Special Export? We may refer to them as "bland brau" (and I often have), but the NASCAR-brau beers ARE beers, and do have relative differences worth acknowledging (just hopefully not very often ). Regarding Tom's suggestions for the change at the end: "Appreciation of diverse beer Appreciation of all beer Appreciation of craft beer" I like the first one (every beer is diverse if you compare it with a different style). I find the second one a little redundant, if not overly expansive. How would "all beer" be defined? Does alcopop qualify because it is a fermented malt product? Heck, even bottled wine coolers are made with malt (check the label, they contain NO wine). The third one, "craft beer" seems to exclusionary to me. IIRC, Sam Adams is no longer "officially" a craft beer because of their size (according to AOB, but I may be wrong on this, not sure of the latest update). I also seem to remember that ownership of a sizeable percentage of the company by a major brewer also disqualifies a company as a "craft brewer." This would apply to Redhook and Widmer, amongst others. Do we now no longer promote the appreciation of heffe-weizen and pale ale because they are made by these two breweries? I do think we should drop the "real" from the mission statement. It is confusing at best, and elitist at worst. I believe we have to include the NASCAR-brau style as well, or we risk becoming too snobbish and elitist. This organization is and should be about appreciation of beer, NOT about us being better than other drinkers. Thanks for hearing me out! Lyle ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ***** Important Subscriber Information ***** To post a message to JudgeNet, send it to judge`at`synchro.com. Send plain text only, no HTML, MIME, encoded text or attachments. Make sure you use a meaningful subject. Quote only as much material as is needed for context. To manage your subscription, go to http://synchro.com/judge/subscriptions.html or send an email to judge-request`at`synchro.com with the subject: help judge. 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