There are various facets of every hobby that people find appealing, similar to the extent that each path emanates from the same source and produces a feeling of contentedness, yet different in that they lead to slightly different destinations. Some homebrewers get tickled by the idea of building out the shiniest and most professional looking garage setup, others obsess (in a good way) over perfecting a traditional style, and some find most appealing the DIY nature of making one’s own beer. Then there are those things that seem much more consistent between homebrewers, despite our idiosyncratic differences, like the very human desire to know what others think of our beer. In numerous ways, nearly every brewer will at some point seek feedback on the quality of the beer they make, relying on the noses and palates of others for critical evaluation. A common method for achieving such feedback is entering beers into homebrew competitions where they are evaluated by judges privy only to the style the beer was submitted as, a method believed by many to produce the most objective assessment of one’s beer.

For today’s Brü’s Views, we’ll be sharing our thoughts and opinions on the evaluation and judging of beer. A hearty cheers to Master BJCP judge and BJCP Assistant Education Director, Amanda Burkemper, for her contribution!

Outside of her BJCP responsibilities, Amanda serves as Education Director of the Kansas City Bier Meisters homebrew club and was featured in the recent Hombrew All-Stars book by Drew Beechum and Denny Conn. She is a homebrewer and mead maker from Overland Park, KS whose skill and dedication to the hobby is recognized both locally and nationally.

| On Beer Evaluation And Judging |

| AMANDA BURKEMPER |

I’ll start with the oft-repeated notion that beer judging is all about forcing people to brew beer to style. Nope! The Guidelines are just that– guidelines. Not mandates. Not shalls or musts. Just guidelines. Do they help corral the “organized chaos” that is the homebrew competition world? Sure, because we need something to measure against. Do they give common nomenclature to the vast world of beer? Absolutely. How else would I know what I’m ordering at a bar? Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let’s get to it.

Beer evaluation and judging should be about whether the beer is (a) what you told me it should be and (b) well made. If it is both of those things– bully for you! If it isn’t, why? And how do you improve?

Brewers/Entrants

You may have noticed I didn’t say that a beer is about “what it should be,” I said “what you told me it should be.” It matters little if you brewed a Pale Ale if it tastes like a Double IPA– don’t tell me that it’s a Pale Ale if it doesn’t taste like it! Just “sell” it as an IPA. Same with specialty ingredients. If you added ginger, coriander, grains of paradise, and white pepper– but the coriander doesn’t come through at all (or is only a vague background note), then don’t tell people about the coriander. Simple description choices like this can help you, whether it is with family & friends or in a competition setting. Setting expectations is key to helping get the feedback and evaluation you are after. Ever have milk in a cup, but think it’s going to be orange juice? That milk is gross! Don’t let that happen to your beer.

All that about descriptions being said, your beer should also be well made. But how do you go from substandard beer to excellent beer? You have two options (well, three if you count “ignoring it” as a solution): learning how to correct it yourself or having someone else help you.

It should be obvious that evaluating your own beer is an excellent way to improve your beer. Using myself as an example: I made crappy, off-flavor-laden beer before I figured out what an off flavor was. How do I know they were bad if I didn’t know what bad was? Well, to this day acetaldehyde in a dark, chocolaty beer still immediately reminds me of my first beer – an underpitched brown ale fermented at closet temperature. Once I started studying for the BJCP Exam back in 2011, I realized that I had problems – off-flavor problems. Learning why I had these off-flavors in my beers quickly improved my beers and allowed me to focus on fine tuning the flavors I wanted in the beers that I made.

If that route is too onerous, then finding someone else to evaluate your beer is another option. Competitions can be a good place to get feedback, but local homebrew clubs can also be great resources for this– if you live near a quality one. Our homebrew club, the Kansas City Bier Meisters, has a session before the meeting begins where anyone can come sit with a couple of high-ranking & experienced judges and chat about their beer. We talk about what the brewer wanted and how close they came, styles, off flavors, balance, any suggestions for change, and why we like it. It is objective feedback with the aim to improve their beer. Sometimes the brewers ask about how they’d do in competition, but oftentimes they ask about balance or general enjoyability– something overlooked by many judges, which brings me to my next point.

Judges

Many newer judges, and some experienced judges, have difficulty describing what is in front of them. It can been seen fairly easily if one is simply “parroting the guidelines” (i.e., writing only what is mentioned in the Guidelines rather than describing the beer in front of them), and we should strive not to do this. It can also be seen to a lesser extent in not actually saying what the beer was like. There are two sides of this. The first is merely describing the parts of the beer (grainy, low bitterness, etc) without describing the beer as a whole. The other, funnier, one is a favorite of a good friend of mine. These reviews are so flowery that you honestly can’t understand what they are on about. “Tastes like a spring meadow, fresh with dew.” Uh… what? Who is tasting spring meadows?? He calls them “Macbeth reviews,” as in “full of sounds and fury, signifying nothing.” If you are evaluating beer, make sure that you are making yourself understood. We are aiming to produce evaluations that we would want to receive; not to inflate our “judge-ego,” not to slam free beers, and not to obfuscate what we mean. We should be helping those who are asking for help. Simple as that!

Think about this: have you ever received a scoresheet from a competition and read it? Or better yet, read it while drinking the beer in question? Do you critique the review written or do you agree with it? What makes you able to agree with the words written or disagree with them? If the judge can accurately describe the beer in front of them, describes the layers of sensations within the beer, and can provide meaningful feedback, you are much more likely to take what that judge said to heart.

Now, if the judge simply wrote 35-50 words, didn’t mention hops once, and gave feedback that incorrectly assumed process or recipe– you wouldn’t put much stock in what they said. This is worthless for both the entrant and the judge. For the entrant, they paid money to enter the competition and get feedback and didn’t get what they paid for. For the judge, they have taken time out of their day and/or weekend only to be dismissed by the entrant. What’s the point in that? We have all seen examples of poor scoresheets posted to social media. Let’s strive to not be the source of those complaints. Fill out the scoresheets as you would want to receive them. Describe the beer in front of you, offer constructive feedback, and above all– be kind!

| MARSHALL |

For me, brewing beer is a creative outlet, a hobby that allows me to produce a product from start to finish with my own two hands, as well as experiment with a bunch of different variables I’m curious about. As one of those cheesy people who favors collaboration over competition, I held off on competitive brewing for over a decade, and while the first two beers I entered fared better than I expected, I didn’t experience the motivating kick I’ve heard others discuss. I’ve since entered quite a few beers into different competitions, usually with encouragement from friends, but always with a purpose other than winning. While not at all scientific, my experiences doing this over the last few years has hugely influenced my perspective on beer evaluation and judging.

Before I get to my opinions, I want to emphasize how much I appreciate those who find value in the judging process and how admirably I view the dedication required to move up in the ranks. I’m a Certified BJCP judge myself and certainly see some positives when it comes to competing and judging, I’ll address that in a bit, but I also have some perspectives that may not be shared by others. My interests being what they are, I’ve found competitions are a good way to test stuff out, so when I do participate, there’s usually some ulterior motive. I like stories, so that’s the route I’ll take here to present my thoughts on evaluation and judging.

I recently entered beers from the same batch of Vienna Lager into 4 different style categories of a very large homebrew competition. When I’ve done this in the past, each beer has been evaluated by different judging pairs in separate flights, and while the inconsistency of those results was interesting, they weren’t terribly compelling. This time was different. Prior to receiving my scoresheets, I learned one of my entries scored well enough (40) to advance. Cool! I did think it was interesting that it wasn’t the beer entered as a Vienna Lager, but it wasn’t really a big deal to me. It was only when my scoresheets arrived weeks later that I learned another one of my beers was evaluated in the same flight by the same judging pair just minutes apart from each other, and it scored 7 points lower. I immediately presumed a couple reasons for the disparate scores:

1. Since the beers were entered under different categories, the lower scoring one was perceived by the judges as not being stylistically accurate.
2. Despite my sanitizing efforts (new bottles pre-soaked in Iodophor then rinsed in StarSan), the lower scoring beer was contaminated.

If the first option was true, comments would surely indicate the beer was out of style with all else being pretty much inline with the higher scoring entry; if contamination was the issue, that box would be checked and there might be comments about off-flavors associated with common contaminants. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the  higher scoring beer was described as “crisp, clean,” “great,” and “not astringnet, very nice,” while the same exact beer sampled 2 beers prior in the flight was noted as having a “caramel corn” character with both DMS and diacetyl present, yet no note at all about contamination. Moreover, scoresheets from both the National and Recognized ranked judges were strikingly consistent, which I personally doubt would be the case had they been evaluated by each independently. Indeed, in every judging scenario I’ve been in, communication between judges has resulted in changes being made to original evaluations, often with the less experienced judge appealing to the the experience of the higher ranked partner.

Fun side-note: the beer I entered as 4 different lager styles was fermented with Saflager W-34/70 at 66°F/19°C, yet nary a mention of esters from any of the judges who evaluated it.

Ultimately, I may have some hangups when it comes to evaluating/judging beer, particularly claims that it is an objective process, but I actually see it as being hugely valuable to the hobby. Some people simply love to compete, others use the feedback they receive to hone their brewing practices, while a few of us weirdos utilize it to explore weird shit. Either way,  it all contributes to the growth of what I believe is a pretty rad community, and that’s what matters most to me.

| JAKE |

To be fair, I have not entered many competitions, only two by my count– a small local competition I joined because I had a beer laying around, and NHC 2016 as a means to “objectively” judge an experiment I was working on at that time. I scored okay with 32 points in the first for a blah Märzen, and 41, 38, and 29 points at the 2016 NHC, respectable but nothing to write home about. When I look at myself introspectively, I feel like I avoid competition for fear of others objectively disliking something I think is great, and not really wanting to have to come to terms with that. Which brings me to evaluation of homebrew.

I’ll admit, there likely isn’t a better, more objective way to judge beer and parse out awards. However, my understanding of the judging process is that it can certainly be somewhat of a haphazard litany of tips you may or may not have done. I’ve also come to note an inordinate amount of inconsistency, I can’t count how many times I’ve heard of someone whose beer scored well in one competition only to have the same beer flop in another. I chalk this up to the likelihood that judges have just as different of palates as the rest of us. I personally have no desire to put a number on someone’s beer as it relates to a particular commercial example, because I’m sure that’s difficult. I’m in no way providing a solution to an issue I see, merely pointing out a reason I generally avoid submitting my beer for this type of evaluation. On the other hand I love what the BJCP puts out and what they are about. To me the definition of styles, while never perfect, provides us with a great framework to baseline what we brew. The BJCP also gives us all an avenue to discuss the merits of homebrew, and a starting place for those experimental types.

While I’ve no strong desire to regularly submit my beers for official judging, that in no way means I’m adverse to real feedback, in fact I’d venture to guess most millennials, like me, want constant feedback. While submitting to competition may in fact be a good way to get that feedback for many, I give more credence to certain individuals I know where I can taste the exact same sample as them. To me this provides a much more useful critique where I can hone in on something they are picking up. So please feel free to tell me if you think my current batch is shitty, it’s possible I’ll agree with you 🙂 and that’s the only way I’m gonna make better beer in the end.

| RAY |

I’ve entered a couple homebrew competitions and I’ll be the first to admit I enjoy the adornments that sit behind my keezer thanks to having some success. But despite having a good track record in competition, I haven’t felt interested in entering more, for several reasons.

The first, I’ll openly concede, is plain old laziness– bottling, packaging, and shipping beer is a time consuming hassle to me, and one I really don’t enjoy in the least. But when it comes to the evaluation and judging itself, I personally haven’t seen the oft-promised useful feedback. I’ve lamented the fact that feedback from friends, family, and homebrew club members seems to be limited to, “Oh, it is really good, may I have another please?” and hoped that competition would back-fill these shallow critiques with something more concrete and actionable. Quite frankly, it really has not for me.

A perfect example is the American Amber I made for last year’s inaugural Brew United Challenge. This was a beer I personally didn’t enjoy, though I couldn’t find any technical faults with it, I just didn’t think it was very good. The recipe wasn’t enjoyable, which wasn’t entirely my fault due to the wonky rules of the competition, and I was hoping to get some valuable feedback from the judges that might help me steer the recipe towards more enjoyable territory, or at least inform my recipe development. In the end, the beer scored well, though just out of a medal for its category. The judges seemed to do a good and complete job on the scoresheets, yet still, I was m left with nothing of any actionable quality. The beer was fine, there was little to complain about from a technical standpoint, and that seems to be about what it takes to get 35-40 in most competitions– broadly within the style, without technical faults, and it’s a 38+. That’s all fine and good, but it’s not what I would call a successful beer, and on some level, the judging is only telling me the things I should know already, if I am not suffering from a case of “my own child.

| MATT |

As a BJCP recognized judge, I guess I can only recount my experience with the process and reflect on how I think it made me both a better brewer and improved my ability to discern key elements of what tasted right and wrong in beer and how to communicate that.

I believe the knowledge of flaws, their flavors, and common corrections for issues is at the heart of the BJCP, and in order to become a truly competent taster, it’s important to have a solid understanding and tasting lexicon. One might develop their taste to the point they “know” good beer from bad, but what good does that do if they can’t explain what specifically is wrong and what might be done to correct it? Is that DMS or diacetyl? Over-carbonation or tannic astringency? Is the hop bitterness strong or too jarring to be out of style? Is a certain flavor or aroma how a particular hop typically expresses itself? Without the ability to be a good beer detective, how can I hope to give feedback past me-like or me-hate? I don’t believe that not having a BJCP certification makes a person “bad at beer,” but rather robs them of a basic starting platform to build useful expertise, a common language to communicate with fellow beer enthusiasts.

This brings me to my second point– I believe it has made me a better brewer. Understanding acetaldehyde comes from a lack of viable yeast cells, I know I can correct it by making a starter to ensure my little beasties perform at their best. Knowing where perceived sweetness and malt character can be pulled from, I learned to adjust my mash temps and times to achieve my desired result– a beer that’s closer to its classic style and flavor. More importantly, when I decide to go completely off the ranch in terms of style or methods, I can defend my reasoning with more than just, “why not?”

The hidden bonus of BJCP certification is the other enthusiastic brewers I got to meet while taking the test for the first time, many returning to bump their scores. Top that off with learning from the highly ranked judges who administered my test and the members of my local club and study group that guided my learning. How could it possibly hurt?

Is all judging perfect? No. Was my first beer perfect? No. Did I get better the more practice and guidance I had? Yes.

The primary purpose of Brü’s Views is to provide a venue for the unabashed sharing of our thoughts on a particular topic without censorship, it’s certainly not to disrespect or offend people. They’re just opinions, everybody has them, and we’d love for you to share yours in the comments section below!

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