Become a Homebrew Judge
On the wall of the homebrew shop where I work, we have a sign reading: “We will gladly taste and critique samples of your homebrew.” In the beginning many of our customers figured this was a plea for free beer. Not so, we told them. We’re trained professionals, but do try this at home!
Knowing what you are tasting can give you a huge advantage as a homebrewer and can allow you to improve recipe formulation, process, and sanitation. It will help you to know more about (and thus be more appreciative of and responsible about) beer.
Having your beer critiqued (judged by someone else who doesn’t have as much personally invested in it as you) is an invaluable way to get honest feedback. Learning to taste and evaluate beer yourself is a natural extension of that — you taste my beer and I’ll taste yours!
Besides, beer tasting and evaluating sessions can be lots of fun.
Which brings me back to the idea of being a “trained professional.”
Remember the episode of “Cheers” where Norm got his dream job as the head taster at the local brewery? Well, that’s not quite what we have in mind here. The kind of beer judge we’re talking about does it out of love; it’s a hobby, not a job. And the beer he or she evaluates is not the Big Boys’ commercial stuff, where consistency is the biggest virtue. No, our beer judges are tasting and rating beer made by people just like them — other homebrewers.
Virtually every homebrewer has heard of local, regional, or national competitions, where specially trained (and yes, “licensed”) judges sample, critique, and rate beers sent in by homebrewers like us.
Many homebrewers have already entered their beer in one or more of these competitions. If you’ve won a ribbon or a trophy or some other prize, congratulations. If you haven’t won anything but have at least been given good, honest feedback on how to improve your brewing, you’ve also come out a winner.
The men and women working so hard behind the scenes have put in a lot of time learning everything they could about beer — the making of it, the flavors and aromas of it (both good and bad), the packaging of it, and more. They are all participants in a nationwide program designed to further the understanding and appreciation of beer, the Beer Judge Certification Program.
Beer on Trial
The BJCP was started in 1985, jointly by the American Homebrewers Association and the Home Wine and Beer Trade Association, a group of homebrew retailers. Their aim was to increase available knowledge about beer, to improve communication about beer, to “standardize” style guidelines, and generally to improve the state and quality of homebrewing.
To do this they felt there had to be a way to decide who was qualified to evaluate beer. What they initially created has grown beyond their wildest expectations, and the BJCP is now an independent entity, having formally separated from the AHA and retailers’ association in 1995.
The BJCP is a volunteer organization of people around the country (and in some other countries as well) who like good beer, but more importantly who know good beer — how it’s made, what it should look like, how it should taste. Their mission remains the same: to foster an appreciation of beer as an alcohol-containing beverage and to improve homebrewing by certifying beer judges.
The focus of the BJCP is the judging exam. To become a legitimate beer judge you have to go through a three-hour written exam. During the exam you have to taste four beers and judge them. The essays you write test your knowledge of basic brewing procedures; chemical processes involved in mashing, fermentation, and malting; history and descriptions of beer styles; and troubleshooting and preventing brewing problems.
There are 10 questions in the written section, which counts for 70 percent of your score. The tastings count for 30 percent, and you are graded on how you perceive and evaluate, how you recognize qualities and flaws, and especially on how you give constructive feedback. The exam administrator and proctors are tasting the same beers at the same time to give the exam graders a basis for comparison.
Study? For a Beer Test?!
I took the exam for the first time this past January. As a veteran homebrewer, beer writer, shop manager at a brewpub’s homebrew store (and thus “guru” to dozens of local homebrewers), I should have been very confident. But I wasn’t.
I felt I knew a lot of things, but how would I know they were the right things? As we set up to host the exam at our brewpub, more and more pressure was on me (forget the so-called “home-field advantage”).
We registered a handful of local brewers, then set up a series of “seminars” on a couple of topics as training sessions. Our assistant manager Julian Zelazny, himself a National Judge, gave us a rundown on the structure of the exam, some typical questions, what to study, what to expect, and how to answer.
This information and these sample questions, largely taken from past exams, are publicly available on the Internet, and potential examinees are encouraged to use them as a study guide. (This is an educational program, after all.) We sat in a group and compared and critiqued a few commercial samples to point out different approaches to tastings.
A couple of weeks later Greg Noonan (brewpub owner, long-time professional, homebrewer, and author) joined us to demonstrate aromas and flavors to recognize — both desirable and flaws. We watched in wonder, and some horror, as Greg prepared cupsful of everything from lacquer thinner to butterscotch extract, burnt matches to grapefruit peel. With his help we learned to recognize off-flavors and contamination problems (if it smells or tastes like burning plastic bleach bottles, you’ve got a problem beer!) and got some suggestions on how to prevent them.
In the end, though, we were on our own. No amount of seminars or training sessions substitutes for experience. So we each went our separate ways, re-read all our brewing manuals, style guidelines, articles on malting and hop rates, and tasted a few beers.
Over the course of the week preceding the exam, my wife and I sat down and tasted more than 20 different styles, comparing American pale ales to Burtons, dry stouts to sweet, pilsners to Dortmunds and Munich helles. Taking copious notes on aroma, color, clarity, head, body and, of course, flavor, I ended up on Friday night with a huge pile of information to try to digest one more time. The exam was scheduled for 8 a.m. on Saturday.
Judgment Day
So there we were, gathered in the pub at 7:45 a.m.: five examinees, one administrator, and one proctor. We had to be done by 11 a.m. because the pub opened then and the last thing we needed was to be disturbed in the last few minutes of the exam.
We were all understandably nervous, but the last thing the exam administrator said to us, I think, was “Relax, don’t worry…” After that, we didn’t have time to think about the exam. We were doing what we liked to do best; we were talking about beer and tasting beer!
Eleven came, the administrator said “Time’s up,” and we handed in our essays and scoresheets. Then we stood around collecting our thoughts, comparing notes (“What did you think sample number two was, anyway?”), and since we were in a pub, after all, we had a beer and some lunch — and talked some more, mostly about what we wished we had studied.
We all had our own “disappointments,” but the general opinion was that you can never know enough about the basic style guidelines: color, tastes, and body, certainly, but original gravity and hops bittering levels would have helped to write more convincing essays. We all felt that we might have passed, but no one was willing to put any serious money on it. I was most worried because of my handwriting: Would the test graders be able to read my essays? We’d know in six to eight weeks.
After the Exam
If you pass, you’re a Beer Judge. Depending on your score and your level of experience in sanctioned events, you may be higher on the chart than others.
If you get a 60 or better, you are automatically a “Recognized Judge.” If you get a 70 or better, you are a Recognized Judge until you earn five experience points (points come from judging or stewarding at competitions, organizing competitions, grading or proctoring exams), when you are promoted to “Certified Judge.”
An 80 on the exam combined with 20 experience points makes you a “National Judge,” and a 90 combined with 40 points qualifies you as a “Master Judge.” There are also the honorary and temporary titles of “Grand Master Judge” and “Honorary Grand Master Judge,” but these are not levels that can be earned through the exam and/or experience.
What comes next is up to you. Beer judges don’t normally get paid much (if at all) to judge, and unless you achieve Michael Jackson status, fame is not likely to come your way through beer tasting. However, one of the most pleasant experiences I can imagine is sitting on a panel at a competition discussing beer with a group of people as knowledgeable and enthusiastic as yourself. And of course, knowing more about someone else’s beer is sure to make your own brewing better.
Continuing Education
As for study materials to use both before the exam and after to improve your general brewing technique, read anything and everything about beer, brewing, and beer lore that you can find.
I particularly recommend Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion and New World Guide to Beer, Fred Eckhardt’s Essentials of Beer Style, and the Brewers Publications Style Series (10 volumes and counting) for information about style parameters and history of brewing.
Greg Noonan’s New Brewing Lager Beer and Dave Miller’s Brewing the World’s Great Beers are invaluable insights into the technical aspects of brewing, from water treatments to temperature control to grain selection for mashing.
There are countless Websites, bulletin boards, and on-line digests where you can probably get the answers to any brewing question in the world. But the most valuable resource is your own experience. The more you brew, especially if you have someone nearby who can objectively evaluate your homebrew, the more you will learn in the long run, more than any manual or article can teach you.
Epilogue: I got the results from my exam. I’m pleased to say that I got an 82. Yes! I’m a recognized beer judge now, working my way up. So many beers, so little time…
