It’s all about experience. When I first took the BJCP exam any style above 6% was illegal to sell in NC. As you can imagine tasting those beers was a challenge. In the end what dragged down my initial taste exam score was not my ability to sense, it was my ability to fill out the score sheet. I never made that mistake again and over time I improved. At one time I felt ill prepared to judge certain categories - meads, ciders, etc., but over time I’ve gotten to the point I’m good with judging anything. Can I do an excellent job of telling a cidermaker how to improve in process? No, but I can tell them what they should eliminate or add, or where I believe things went wrong. I can pretty much judge anything given a set of style guidelines and I’m sure many other judges are in the same boat.
What will be challenging once the guidelines are established across all competitions will be the BOS round. When that Piwo Grodziskie hits the table I’m going to have to reference the guidelines. With the completely new numbering system I suspect BOS rounds will slow down until people become familiar with them. I never took the time to memorize the 2008 numbers so I probably won’t wast time on the 2015. I will take the time to read and comprehend all the styles, but remembering what is 9B isn’t going to help me judge beer in a glass, it will however help speed up a BOS round, but some beer geek at the table will have those set in memory after a few comps.
Right on, I went back and read that part of the instructions. It renders the listed commercial examples pretty much meaningless. Which is good. It shouldn’t be about searching for clones of the top example.
Too much detail, too many “styles”, and some false info. The German lager section for Munich helles in the ingredients says “German Saazer-type hops”. What? Hallertauer, Hersbrucker, Spalter… Not Zatec hops… That one stood out and bothered me. But then again, why should I rely on BJCP? I don’t ever care to judge beers or enter competitions.
I’d like to remind people that its about an impression. How does the beer taste, smell, look, feel. It isn’t about what the ingredients are, not while you’re judging it. (Obvious specialty info exceptions aside.)
Here’s the text about the ingredient section from the introduction. It isn’t meant to be a full accounting of every possible ingredient.
“Characteristic Ingredients. We don’t attempt to provide enough details to create a recipe for
every style, but we do try to describe the typical ingredients (and sometimes processes) that help
drive the character that distinguishes the style from others. Not every beer is going to be made
the same way or using the same ingredients; we are simply describing what is typical, not what is
required.”
It would be ideal if every judge had lots of experience with the styles they are judging, but it’s often not practical. IMO, this is exactly what the style guidelines are for, especially some of the historical styles. I’ve never had a Sahti, but now I can look up the guideline and have something to judge the beer against rather than Googling or guessing (same for beers like Black IPA). This comes down to using your senses against what the style guidelines say. Too many judges don’t trust their senses and often look for a clone of their favorite examples of each style (or just what they are familiar with). Or, when they judge with the guidelines in front of them, suddenly they are sensing and writing the words they are seeing on the page that may not actually be in the beer.
“I’m a big fan of UFC, I wrestled my freshman year of high school, and I have a Tapout tank top. I’ve never heard of Pencak Silat before, but that’s ok. Do your thing, and I’ll let you know if you’re a black belt or not.”
I just dont want to be that guy… that’s all im saying.
