One of the few things I see on a scoresheet that actually anger me. Ron Pattinson even went off on it during one of his seminars last year at NHC.
At the BJCP reception, we also learned that Kentucky Common Beer did not use a sour mash. Now I am of the mind that any talk of Brewers in an area doing what the distillers do is a myth.
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There was even a significant amount of debate on the BJCP forums on the style guidelines for it.
It wasn’t really debate. None of the new guideline threads really involved much debate. They were all like, “This is what the Masters have determined, this is the way it’s going to be, you don’t like it then that’s just too bad.”
My opinion of the BJCP is reduced by a few notches. I still think BJCP is useful to a point. But I could do without the one-party politics and the one-upmanship by some of the highest ranking members. 
I think its an awesome organization if you keep in mind that it is not the ruling force for all things beer. Ive been enjoying beer for over 40 years and didnt know the BJCP existed until about 3 years ago. Probably about 99% of beer lovers have never heard of it.
The way i see it, the guidelines are great for homebrew competitions. They become less meaningful the farther away they get from a homebrew competition. Im proud to be a BJCP judge, and judging is a hoot. But I can also just enjoy a beer as is without always defaulting to how it fits a guideline. And I’m perfectly fine with it not being a total democracy.
Dave, rather than a lower view of the BJCP, maybe its just a more appropriate realistic view?
I love strongly peated whisky, but it is a much more enjoyable flavor after distillation than it is in any beer… I cannot and will not use it in beer.
Yep, I feel exactly the same. The flavor just doesn’t work in beer (for me).
Maybe I should sign up for the BJCP forums. The information presented from primary sources, i.e. The Louisville brewery logs said the mash was straightforward with no souring step. It would have been fun to follow.
Meanwhile, Brewferm’s aswered my inquiry and now claims the lightly peated malt to be at 5.3 ppm instead of the 15-25 which was mentioned in the technical specs (which have now been taken offline it seems).
:-X
What I get from all the above is
- peat is probably not a historic factor in beer
- most people don’t like any peat at all in their beer
- those who do, most prescribe cautious use
- which doesn’t precent loonies --such as myself-- from going full whack with the stuff
- competations tend to not award prizes to peaty beers
Ive heard that there has been a love of the scottish in france and belgium post WW2. I have a theory that the peat smoke thing started in Scotch beers brewed in norther france and belgium post WW2. So peat smoked malt might in fact have a traditional home in Flemish Scottish beers. The same way that avacado is a traditional ingredient in Californian Japanese sushi
I can very much testify from personal experience that if there is any single beer style where peated malt would be considered wildly off-the-mark, it would be Belgian Scotch (if such a style would be at all recognised by the BJCP).
Belgians like balance, remember? We like balance so much that we diss beers if they so much as hint of flavour.
This is how I saw it and this is how a lot of other people saw it, too. There are a lot of problems with the 2014 guidelines but conversations about improving them couldn’t be had because everybody got cut off at the knees for disagreeing with the way the draft was written.
The BJCP has made its decisions about how it will proceed and most of us will be subjected to that as competitors and judges because there is little choice. Some people have written off BJCP competitions in certain styles, such as saison, brett and sour beers, because the way the BJCP has structured those styles in the new guidelines and the way they are approached for certification makes judging them too inconsistent to make it worth the effort.
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My own experience for brett/sours/wilds is practically the opposite. I know of quite a few people that are chomping at the bit for the new guidelines since they don’t want to just throw their brett, sour, and/or wild ales into 23 due to bad experiences there.
I’m one of those. I submitted what will fit into the new American mixed fermentation sour, as a straight lambic this year. It got a 30/30 with the detracters being too much head, not enough barn yard, not cheesy enough hops, too much carbonation. We’ll see how the same recipe does next year in the new category.
I thought cheese is not desired.
I know I dont desire it. I scored a bottle of Boon a while back. It must have been an old old bottle. I reeked of toe jam and blew cheese. Absolutely undrinkable, as in it wouldn’t stay down. Boomerang effect to the max. I wonder sometimes if some judges sample those dead commercial examples and think thats what it should be?
But my point in commenting is not to cry about my score or what a judge wrote, but just to point out that sours need more catagories and the new expanded guidelines will help that. Sours are really growing in the commercial world and I expect that to continue.
I looked and the guideline specifically say cheese is undesirable. Maybe this person has a very good pallet and kindergarten reading skills.
I’m not saying some of the changes aren’t an improvement but the new styles bring along a number of problems of their own. Saison is a pretty good example. The new style guideline recognizes that saisons might be all over the place but squeezes them into the same classification where it is highly likely that, like most styles, the biggest or most exotic beer wins. So here we have a style that is incredibly diverse lumped together but then IPA is so splintered that an entrant is free to basically make up an IPA style.
The bigger problem with the BJCP is that these styles tend to be under-taught to judges (see Jim’s comments) so much so that many BJCP training courses barely address them and they are barely tested. The stories of horrible judging in these styles are endless. I’ve personally seen judges say they don’t like sour beers and score down sour beers because they just didn’t like it (in cat. 23) or give the best scores to the least sour beers in the flight out of personal preferences. It seems too accepted and although these complaints have been raised to BJCP leadership it doesn’t seem like they care.
Judges are human, and reality is that there will always be some judges who suck, and there will always be organizers who don’t care about pairing judges with style preferences appropriately, etc. I have issues with how BJCP does some things, but in their defense, they can’t resolve world hunger either, whether they care or not. What they CAN do is establish style guidelines and competition guidance that makes sense to a majority of people. But if they refuse to listen to a majority of people, then majority doesn’t rule, and THAT, I have a problem with.
David,
Its a universal truth that government gets its power from the consent of the governed, or apathy of the governed, or by forcing the governed into submission. Since the BJCP isnt armed, its either consent or apathy. So I applaud your speaking up. I personally think they are heading in the right direction but it may be slow going for a bit. I really can’t imagine how much work goes into running a huge group of volunteers who, by the nature of it, have very strong opinions.