Why I Judge Beer
I recently took a Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) tasting exam, I had some time before the exam started to reflect on things. I was thinking, “I drove 2 hours to get here, the test is 90 minutes, it’s before lunch and I’m about to sample 6 beers. Why would I want to do this.” The simple answer is that I want to attain the rank of National Judge, and my tasting exam score doesn’t qualify me for the written exam, which is required for National and higher ranks. But, why would I want to do that, why would I want to be a certified judge at all, or even, why would I want to judge a beer in the first place!
As a homebrewer, it can be hard to find good, honest feedback on your beer. Enter the homebrew competition, not only do you get feedback, it’s likely the person giving it has a strong interest in giving good feedback, if not a certified judge or professional brewer. In addition to feedback, you also get ranked among other entries, which can be another way to validate how you feel about your beer. Having received the lovely feedback, the likely next step is doubting the skills of the judge that disagreed with you! Now that you disagree with a judge, you have a few of choices of how to interpret it.
- The judge was wrong
- You were wrong 🤯
- Something happened to the beer after it left your control
- Just a difference in perception
Most likely you don’t have enough information to know exactly the reason, so instead, which interpretations yield the best results. For 1 and 4, you just have to be ready to disregard some feedback, which is probably a good idea in some cases. For 3, you can likely improve some processes to improve how your beer holds up, but you should do that anyway. For 2 though, here you can make some serious progress. Put yourself in the place of the judge, they had a little sample of beer among many other samples of beer, and wrote down their experience and score it for correctness. If you didn’t do that with your beer, are you sure you are right? Do you even know what they are looking for? Now you have some work to do, and the BJCP is a good way to fill this gap.
With a solid education and some judging experience, you can make some progress on understanding the feedback you receive, and gain a better appreciation for the exemplary beers you come across. The BJCP is even designed to ensure you can’t really move up the ranks without both education and experience. The experience component is pretty straight forward, you get points for judging competitions and you need those points to obtain ranks. As for education, the tasting and written exams both ensure you have a good handle on what differentiates the various styles. There are complaints that the style system is overbearing and it’s a waste of time to learn them in detail, but I would argue that regardless of the intrinsic value of the style framework, learning it will improve your ability to discuss and evaluate beers.
As important as the education aspect is, the experience is where the fun and learning really take place. When judging, you are typically in a pair, but you both judge the beer individually first. This requires you to put some faith in your abilities, there’s no one to ask for help, you have to smell taste, look, and put it in writing. And you have to do it pretty quickly, it doesn’t sound like 15 minutes is a short time to taste a beer, but when you are trying to thoroughly describe and evaluate it, it goes by in a flash. It’s no fun to be working on that long after your partner is done, so you have to focus and get to work. Then, you compare scores and notes. This is the gold, you get to find out if your partner thought that was too much banana aroma, or if the hops smelled of orange or grapefruit, and on and on. This is a great calibrator on your own experience and can do wonders for your brewing. It’s well worth the time spent just to spend the time honing your skills with an equal, but as you go to more events, you will find yourself paired with highly ranked judges and experienced pro-brewers, which can really be eye opening.
I hope this little discussion of beer judging inspired you to take the plunge, see you at the judging table!