help interpreting BJCP scoresheet

[danny]

@thomasbarnes

2. Get your grain crush right. If you’re grinding your grain with a Corona Mill, you’ll be lucky to get 60% efficiency. There are plenty of pictures on the web (or in books like John Palmer’s How to Brew or Greg Noonan’s New Brewing Lager Beer) of what a good grain crush looks like. It should be about mostly fine “grits” of varying sizes and maybe about 10% flour, with mostly intact husks, and no intact or mostly intact grains. Ideally, you want fine flour inside virtually intact husks, but that’s not possible even with professional grade equipment.

I haven’t been following this thread but FWIW I use a corona mill and I get 70-75% efficiency all the time.

Danny

[thomasbarnes]

I used a Corona mill for a long time. I found that you could get a reasonably decent crush if you put a short stack of washers onto the screws used to hold the “C” shaped part of the mill in place, giving a slightly greater gap between the grinder plates.

Even so, I had lots of trouble with the grain husks being torn and getting an uneven crush.

[melferburque]

I just picked up a Barley Crusher MaltMill and plan to use it for the first time this weekend.  previously I had been using the HBS mills with mixed results depending on where I went.

I also received my scoresheets from the GEBL Hop Madness Bracket last night, and the comments on those were much more helpful.  I scored in the mid 30s on two beers, and had a 39.5 on my Cascadian.  I was pleasantly surprised by the CDA, it took a couple months to really come into its own, but I’m definitely going to use that recipe again, with a few tweaks.

[thomasbarnes]

@melferburque

I scored in the mid 30s on two beers, and had a 39.5 on my Cascadian.

That’s an excellent score, normally good enough to win in its category. The competition must have been brutal if it didn’t.

[tschmidlin]

@thomasbarnes

@melferburque

I scored in the mid 30s on two beers, and had a 39.5 on my Cascadian.

That’s an excellent score, normally good enough to win in its category. The competition must have been brutal if it didn’t.

It’s not a standard competition, it’s IPA (and sub categories) only and after judging the beers go head to head in a bracket challenge until a winner is chosen.

[melferburque]

I figured I was doing pretty well scoring in the mid 30s in my first competition, but like tschmidlin said, that was an insane competition.  I know they had over a hundred entries, all IPAs, and I was happy to just qualify for the initial 64 beer bracket with all three of my entries.

I’m on the fence about entering the same beers into the cascade cup pro-am in two weeks.  I don’t have enough time to re-brew with improvements, and I won’t be able to win with my current lineup (especially since I’m out of the 39.5 cascadian).  is it worth getting the extra feedback when I already have four good scoresheets on the beers?  I’d feel a little guilty for wasting the judges’ time.

[tschmidlin]

It’s not a waste of the judges time if you want more feedback.  Or if you think it might win.  It’s good to get it in front of multiple sets of judges.

Plus we like to get lots of entries for the Cascadia Cup

[melferburque]

@tschmidlin

It’s not a waste of the judges time if you want more feedback.  Or if you think it might win.  It’s good to get it in front of multiple sets of judges.

Plus we like to get lots of entries for the Cascadia Cup

seeing as I didn’t make it out of the first round of the GEBL bracket challenge, I doubt I’d win.  I can at least up the carb on both of them, that might be worth an extra point or two.  I’ll get them dropped off next week.

[thomasbarnes]

@tschmidlin

@thomasbarnes

That’s an excellent score, normally good enough to win in its category. The competition must have been brutal if it didn’t.

It’s not a standard competition, it’s IPA (and sub categories) only and after judging the beers go head to head in a bracket challenge until a winner is chosen.

That’s brutal!

[thomasbarnes]

@melferburque

Is it worth getting the extra feedback when I already have four good scoresheets on the beers?  I’d feel a little guilty for wasting the judges’ time.

Entering a beer in competition isn’t wasting the judges’ time, that’s why they’re there.

But, if you don’t have competitive beers, there’s two reasons to enter them - to get feedback or to support the club running the contest.

If you’re cheap and just want feedback, you don’t have to enter the competition at all. Just take a bottle of a beer to your local HB shop or HB club meeting and corner someone you know to be an experienced judge who gives good advice (not necessarily BJCP-ranked). Have them taste your brew and give feedback. Since you’re standing right there, they can ask questions about ingredients, process, etc., to further troubleshoot your problems.

If you are a serious competitor, getting feedback from experienced judges before you enter can also help you decide which beers are contenders and which are also-rans, which maximizes your chances of winning.

Of course, if you become a beer judge, or learn to troubleshoot as well as a judge, then you can provide your own feedback. That’s one of the reasons why guys like Gordon Strong and Jamil Zainasheff are such heavy hitters in the NHC - they’re also great judges.

Finally, if you want further feedback about a beer from a competition, just about every judge has their email address on the judging forms. That’s an invitation to send them email and ask for more info. But, if you do send email, be polite and describe the beer - it’s unlikely that the judge will remember your beer unless it was really terrible, really good, or really unusual. Also, not all judges respond to email.

[melferburque]

@thomasbarnes

@melferburque

aroma 8/12. slightly off funk in the front, backed by citrus and a light sweetness. no DMS, slight acetaldehyde

Unless you’re editing the comments, IMO you didn’t get your money’s worth from the judge. I’d expect a lot more description than you got from a National level judge, and I really hate vague, unhelpful terms like “funk.” If this guy was proctoring an exam beer, I’d be swearing at him through the entire exam set as I graded it. He might be Nationally ranked, but he wasn’t up to scratch when he scored your beer.

Given that your beer’s a strong Rye IPA, possibly made with old hops, and possibly fermented too warm, there’s at least six things that could account for the “funk” and he didn’t mention any of them in aroma, flavor or overall impression.

2. Old Hops - If you got a good deal on Willamette, they might have been old or improperly stored. If you got notes like Roquefort cheese in the aroma or flavor, that’s a telltale sign of old hops. It’s subtle, but definitely “funky.” If you have any of the suspect hops still around, smell them - really huff them to get the aroma deep into your nasal passages. If you pick up cheesy and/or grassy notes, and/or if the hops are brownish and fall apart easily, you’ve got old hops.

finally got a chance to brew again, pulled out my willamette from the fridge. there was definitely a cheese funk to them. having never used willamette before, I thought maybe that was normal and didn’t think much of it.  good to know! fortunately I’m only out a couple bucks on that. and I really didn’t mind the funk in the IPA, so I’ll still end up using them, just not for anything I turn in to competition.