However, if the judges were doing their jobs, the ESBs were judged as ESBs, not Special Bitters. That beer may have scored lower if judged as an ESB. One thing that I have noticed is that ESBs rarely win the category.
I did not enter the National Homebrew Contest; therefore, it is not sour grapes. There have been many times where I brewed an outstanding beer that I could have entered into a competition except for the fact that the beer exceeded the gravity range for the style. It’s called personal integrity.
BJCP judges are working with what they have been told about a beer. An ESB that is entered as a Special Bitter is going be judged as a Special Bitter. However, an ESB is a bigger all-around beer. It’s no small secret that the biggest well-made beer within a subcategory almost always wins. This advantage is amplified in category 8 where two out of three subcategories are lower than standard American gravity beer styles.
S., I don’t question your personal integrity or the NHC winner’s. But, I don’t think the gravity numbers in the BJCP style guidelines are hard limits. I think those gravity numbers are just guidelines. If a brewer has been entering beers in a category across multiple contests he/she gets to know what the judges expect from a beer in that category. A brewer who wants to win has to adjust.
I don’t think Denny was referring to not winning, but perhaps a problem with the BJCP, since we all know you recently had a melt down and resigned, including demanding that Gordon Strong strike all of your info from BJCP records. That might give one a clue that someone in that frame of mind could possibly sift through minor details in search of a tiny fault to point out.
I have no doubt that is not the case here, you’re probably just trying to be helpful and ended up being misunderstood.
Having had fresh Fuller’s ESB on cask at the Mawson’s Arms, I would say that most BJCP judges would knock it down as being too thin and not enough caramel flavor and not enough hops.
The stuff we get in bottles is a higher OG recipe than cask. By the time it usually gets here it is a sweet caramel mess due to oxidation. That is what most will judge a beer against.
Ron Pattinson claims that John Keeling showed him a WBC score sheet that said the Fuller’s ESB he had entered was not to style, and that is not a BJCP competition.
I do not know where you obtained that information, but I never sent a message to Gordon demanding him to remove my information from the BJCP database. Demand is a very strong word that has legal ramifications.
Trust me, if I had demanded to have my information removed from the BJCP database, the demand would have been sent by my attorney.
Same thing happened to SNPA at GABF a few years ago.
Sometimes I just read the crazy stuff you post and I’m just left scratching my head at how one could fly so far off the deep end…
I obtained the information from you, on your thread, this forum, that you posted after you got your score from your tasting exam, which the whole thread has been deleted now. I don’t care enough to invent it.
I guess if I were to speak bluntly, I’m struggling to find the value in the point of this. An NHC winner’s recipe is one brix too high so… burn down the BJCP? Yank his medal for not complying with the style guidelines? Kudos for your eagle eye on the details, but what do you propose as a fix?
This thread is amazing. I searched for the aforementioned bjcp thread and couldn’t find it. That was classic too. Stay classy guys.
I just hope we don’t lose another valuable contributor over this.
I think that judges try harder to like the smaller beers, even though they would prefer to drink the stronger, hoppier or more sour ones. The fact that a 60/- won best of show is telling in that respect, in spite of it being a little big for style.
I was merely clearing up an non-truth while defining what the word “demand” means in this context. A demand is in fact different than a request. A demand is a peremptory assertion of a legal right. If my attorney had sent a demand letter to the BJCP, the BJCP would have to prove that deleting my information would cause the organization undue harm or comply with the demand, as I never granted the BJCP non-time constrained rights to my personal information.
With that said, I politely asked Gordon to remove my name from the BJCP roster. I later inquired as to how I could get my information removed from the database when I discovered that all he did was to change my record status to resigned. Gordon’s response was that the BJCP did not remove records under normal circumstances, and the discussion was abandoned at that point. Had I felt the need to demand to have my data removed, the next letter that BJCP received would have been from my attorney, after which, I am positive that my data would have been deleted. The BJCP is not going risk litigation over such a trivial matter.
Let’s start with ensuring that an entry is within the gravity range for a style. This check can be automated.
I’ve got a question. Are the BJCP guidelines hard and fast rules or are they suggestions, i.e., guidelines? If they are hard and fast rules, they should be enforced. If they are guidelines, there was no infraction and therefore, no penalty. It ends up being like the difference between request and demand.
Guidelines on how to brew a beer to style. Beers are judged to style. Sometimes a good beer can’t be discerned to be out of style if slightly bigger or with slightly more bitterness.
If comes down to the brewer entering in a style he thinks the beer fits and will do well. Some beers push the limits in the NHC, but that happens in the WBC and GABF too. It is up to the judges to determine if a beer is too big, too bitter, too hoppy, and so on. No objective measurements are made in the judging process.
The idea that judges at homebrew competitions should carry out lab grade analysis of gravity… and by default - IBU’s, SRM, etc… to assure that a beer is exactly to “style” is ridiculous. The competition is about how a beer is perceived. That is it. If a home brewer makes a beer in a way that is perceived as within the style - that is what it is all about. Otherwise, just invent a computerized robot, dump the beer in it, and it can spit out whoever’s beer was precisely to all the numbers that we decide are “the perfect beer.”
You are pretty quick to say that a word like “demand” is a strong word… well, so are words like “cheating” and “integrity.” You essentially asserted that if someone enters a beer without the right “numbers” they are a “Cheater with no integrity.” That is simply something almost no one agrees with - except you.
The best beers won. I am sure they were great, great beers.
+10. Well said.
Why have style guidelines at all? Let’s have one ale category with first place going to the best tasting beer. Does anyone really want to see a competition where an 8A Ordinary Bitter has to complete with a 14C IIPA? The guidelines exist so that like beers are judged with like beers and judges know what to expect.
Having integrity means that one plays by the rules, even it if puts one at a disadvantage. Purposely entering a bigger beer in a smaller beer category is not playing by the rules. It puts everyone else who played by the rules at a disadvantage. It is no secret that beers at the top of the gravity range tend to do better than those at the bottom of the gravity range for a given style.
With that said, I have never seen an authentic British Special Bitter or Extra Special Bitter recipe that contains 21% caramel malt. The fact that this beer did so well reinforces Jeff’s assertion that most Americans have never tasted a British beer that was not old and/or oxidized.
My introduction to craft ale was via beers made by two award winning British brewmasters; namely, Steve Parkes and Alan Pugsley. While most people know Steve as the head honcho at the American Brewers Guild, his first brewing stint in the U.S. was as founding brewmaster at the British Brewing Company (BBC) in Maryland. The BBC’s first product was a cask-condition bitter known as Oxford Class. It was a flavor explosion for a late twenty-something who drank mostly Molson Golden and National Premium when he drank beer at that point in time. A year later, I had Wild Goose IPA, which pretty much put a fork in my desire to drink Molson Golden and National Premium.
When I started brewing in early 1993, I had zero interest in cloning SNPA, Liberty Ale, or any of the other West Coast ales that were available on the East Coast. The beers that I wanted to clone were Oxford Class, Wild Goose IPA, and Red Feather Pale Ale, which was another Pugsley beer. To this day, English-style bitter/pale ale/IPA is my focus as an amateur brewer, which is why I shook my head when I read the recipe.
I have no dog in this fight, but the brewer who submitted the entry would certainly have known the numbers in advance of the submission (even if not at the point of brewing the beer - due to greater attenuation or higher efficiency or some other similar boost in points arising from the manner of brewing). So, isn’t the point that if you know your beer does not fit the style guidelines precisely for a category, but fits another category, you should not proceed to enter it in the incorrect category? That doesn’t seem to be imposing a great hardship on the brewer when he knows it to be the case…there is always the specialty classification, after all.
An example I have on my tap is a Scottish 60 schilling (intended to be 60), but the ABV exceeds 3.2% ABV. I would feel uncomfortable passing it off as a true 60 Schilling, when it fits the 70 Schilling designation. Would that matter much to a judge? Probably not a whole lot, but as the entrant, I feel a little obligated to meet that aspect of the guidelines.
But in the end, I hope the judges don’t have to try to sort out those technical deviations from style guidelines, except when the judging criterion clearly cause the beer to be out of style. I don’t think I could ever reach the point where I could tell an OG to be a few points higher than the style guidelines, could anyone of us?
Our greatest strength is always our greatest weakness.
The OP is right. 5 gravity points over, is by definition, out of style. Guidelines matter. It is exactly the same personality characteristic that initiates a thread like this one and previous threads in which I learn a great deal about yeast. Details matter. Detail oriented people care precisely about details. The downside is what others may view is pickiness (or worse).
So I say we let the OP be who he his. Even when it pushes buttons. We need & value all kinds of persons. We each bring something to the forum that is enriching.