I’m studying for the BJCP now and so I’ve been reviewing this page, going onto the eZymurgy web-based app, finding the Commercial Calibration section, and then grabbing the text of each of the Commercial Calibrations from all the back issues for styles I’m currently studying.
This is a most annoying, labour-intensive and convoluted process.
I’d be eternally grateful (as I’m sure would all other aspiring BJCP judges) if someone at AHA/Zymurgy could publish a collection of all back-issue Commercial Calibrations in one handy booklet, app, PDF or similar…
The old Commercial Calibration webpages were taken down because they took quite a long time to put together and would only get a dozen or so visits a month, and that was when it was doing well. It could go weeks without anyone going there at all. We opted to just keep a list and point people the issues via the electronic magazine.
I will absolutely bring this idea up with the Web and Zymurgy teams and see if it’s something we’ll bring back.
I’ve got a little heartburn with the commercial calibration lists. It is about availability. Why list a beer and then put in parentheses ‘not available in the U.S.?’ The more common occurrence though is that the examples are just not available in a given region. I can understand that I can’t get all of the examples in Yakima, but Seattle?! Surely there are more commercial examples of the given beer styles that exist in a large market like Seattle that are not on the list but could be.
My solution would be to give permission to a small number of top-level BJCP judges to simply log on to a website so that when they try a given commercial beer and it is a good example they can add it to the list. This list could even be ‘unofficial’ if there are issues I am not seeing with the process.
The bottom line: the commercial calibration lists need to be longer so that a person doesn’t have to travel to another state, the opposite coast, or Europe to get an example of a given style.
Agreed. And for us (few) international AHA members (I’m in London, UK) it’s near impossible to get a regional US beer unless it’s a really famous one like a Sierra Nevada…
Depends on the style I suppose. At some point its just reality. The prime examples of Kölsch are going to be in Kölschville. Its just not practical to expect the organization to find great commercial examples in every region, or even most. And im not sure that it makes for interesting reading if all of the zymurgy commercial calibration beers were stuff available everywhere.
In the same vein as off flavor kits, how cool would it be if you could buy a commercial calibration kit from someone? It would probably cost a grand, but it would be pretty cool.
Yup. Maybe just do each and every commercial example cited in the guidelines to start with… That’s gotta be some reasonably heavy drinking, but if they made it into the guidelines in the first place, I would hope there’d be an assessment or two kicking around for each of them.
The goal for commercial examples is similar to that according to what Gordon has said several times in discussing the new guidelines. They intentionally tried to limit the examples in the 2015 set because of the constantly changing nature of distributions and commercial examples.
[quote]The bottom line: the commercial calibration lists need to be longer so that a person doesn’t have to travel to another state, the opposite coast, or Europe to get an example of a given style.
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For some styles that’s going to be tough. It’s part of the reason why Southern English Brown became London Brown and is a historical style. Unless you’re in a really small region (geographically speaking), you’re not going to be able to find a commercial example.
I dunno. I think the commercial calibration article would be pretty boring if it was only mass market widely available beers. I kind of like that they’re judging a wider variety of beers and I think it’s cool to see that the scores aren’t always top shelf.
Of course, I’m not studying to be a judge so that’s an element that doesn’t factor in for me.