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This past weekend, I had the opportunity to help judge the 2008 Samuel Adams Longshot Western Regionals. While I am officially a BJCP beer judge, this is my first competition. Of the many beer competitions that are held in the Bay Area, my first one happened to be one of the biggest around.

Samuel Adams, for those who haven’t heard of them by now, is not a brewing company but a brand of beer. The brewery that actually makes Samuel Adams is called the Boston Beer Company and if you’ve watched any sort of television at all, you’ll have seen their founder Jim Koch rubbing fresh hops in his hands or sniffing a glass of beer.

There’s strength in numbers and Samuel Adams has quite a number of beers in their portfolio. The Samuel Adams line of beers include, but are not limited to, Boston Lager, Boston Ale, Pale Ale, Cream Stout, Black Lager, Honey Porter, Summer Ale, Winter Lager and their infamous Millenium and Utopia lines. This is just a partial list; this is also what makes the Boston Beer Company such a great brewery. The Boston Beer Company could’ve played it safe but they hold true to the principles of the craft beer movement and continue to develop different and flavorful beers.

In addition, the Boston Beer Company has continued to support the homebrew scene. It’s largest and most visible effort has been it’s annual Longshot competition. Basically, the Boston Beer Company holds a contest where homebrewers can enter their homebrewed beers. The winner of the Longshot competition will have their beers brewed by the company and sold nationwide. How awesome is that? You could totally enter one of your beers on a lark and it could potentially end up on the shelf of your local BevMo. As you can imagine, thousands of beers are entered annually, which is how I find myself in San Francisco at 9am on a Saturday morning getting ready to judge a few of these beers.

The Longshot is one of the best-sponsored homebrew competitions, if not the best sponsored event. When I arrived at the San Francisco Hilton, I checked in at the registration table where I am handed an official “Official 2008 Samuel Adams Longshot Competition Judge” t-shirt, “perfect pint” glass and some “choose your own adventure/scratch off” collateral you could turn in for another, limited offer t-shirt (which I just found out at the time of writing this article I was supposed to give to the Samuel Adam representative at the time of the competition). In addition to these giveaways, judges are treated to an all-you-can-eat continental breakfast held in the room next door. It doesn’t stop there though; we are also given an all-you-can-eat lunch, all-you-can-eat dinner, and all-you-can-eat breakfast (with an omelet bar) the following morning. Did I mention that if you are coming from out of town, they’ll put you up for the night at the Hilton as well? I shouldn’t get too comfortable though as judging other beer competitions are nowhere as posh. Judges are lucky to get anything to eat, really.

The judging started at approximately 10am. I was assigned to judge in the English Brown Ale category. Based upon the description in the BJCP, brown ales should be full of flavor and complexity. It was only later did I realize that this category was flavorful and complex in a subtle way, very subtle. While I didn’t take any tasting notes I can share with you, I can say that judging beer isn’t all puppies and rainbows. You must keep in mind that all the beers being judged are homebrews. As such, the quality of the beer varies greatly from bottle to bottle. There was a flight of twelve beers between the four judges at our table. When all was said and done, the judge I partnered with and I only judged five beers total. Out of those five, only one was good enough to make it to the second, mini-BOS (best of show). Typically for a homebrew, a score over 30 (out of 50 possible points) is considered very good. We had two beers score in the mid-30s, yet only one was good enough to move on.

The senior judge I was partnered with, Tom (I think his name is Tom), was very patient with me. He was usually finished minutes before me and reassured me that I didn’t have to rush. The most important thing he told me was to write down good notes to so as to help the homebrewers whose beer we were judging. I must say, I felt a great deal of pressure to write down good feedback that I might have hindered my own ability to judge well. I was having trouble keeping up and I felt somewhat lacking in my abilities. To make matters worse, my hands smelled of both the lotion I put on that morning coupled with the smell of pink bathroom soap. Every time I raised my sample to smell, I got a whiff. I wanted to write down “fruity” and “perfumy” on the scoresheets but I couldn’t do that. I tried my best to work through it. Still, as a first time judge, I was within five points of my senior judge. That alone gave me some confidence that I was at least in the ballpark.

Sammy on the other hand volunteered to be a steward again. The original plan was for her to bum around San Francisco with some acquaintances while I judged but she volunteered and they put her right to work. She ended up stewarding the Belgian strong ales category and thankfully for her, Erich of Pixelbrew was at the table. We had met Erich previously at the World Cup Beer Competition held at Trumer Brauerei in Berkeley. He could not stop praising Sammy’s palette and rightfully so. Her palette is much more sensitive than mine. Case in point, Erich and his paired judge were having trouble figuring out a flavor in a beer they weren’t sure to pass or send back. They had Sammy taste a sample and she told them, “Honey”. After “ah-ha”-ing, they passed the beer on.

After a very nice lunch of salad, pasta and chicken, Sammy and I bummed around in the hotel room waiting for the Best of Show judging to take place. We were told to come down at 3pm as that’s when the judging would take place. By the time we arrived at 3:10pm, the judging was already over. While I can’t confirm it, I heard a bock won Best of Show.

With most of the judges having left to drink more beer at a few of the local, reputable watering holes, Sammy and I hoofed over to Union Square. This is normally a part of town I avoid simply because it’s filled with tourists. Still, Sammy has been putting up with my beer habit and me; I had to indulge her wishes to walk around Union Square for a bit. We visited some shops, walked around more, and eventually settled down at the Italian café right in the square. Despite the overcast weather, it was a beautiful day.

Dinner was more of the same. It was served buffet-style and featured salads, pork, chicken and more pasta. Just like lunch, the food was fantastic. We joined mead maker extraordinaire Micah and his wife Ann at the table for dinner. Soon afterwards, Scott and Erich joined us as well. While the conversations that we were having were interesting, Sammy and I excused ourselves as we planned to attend the Saison and Bieré de Garde beer tasting being put on by JJ of ThirstyHopster fame.

The taxi we took to her place was only the second taxi I’ve ever taken my entire life. The first was the night before. As such, I was completely fascinated by the experience. When we arrived at JJ’s place, the tasting had already started but thankfully, we only missed out on the opening beer. Having been drinking since 10am, I didn’t take any notes on the beers we tried, In fact, you can read all about the beers directly on JJ’s website. I remember enjoying the Fantome La Daimatienne most out of the saisons. Nothing against JJ but none of the Biere de Gardes were not doing it for me. The style calls for a certain level of funkiness in the beer but in all the samples we had, I did not get even a hint of the funk on the nose, let alone the flavor. To JJ’s defense, true Biere de Garde’s are incredibly hard to find and she picked the American version instead. In my opinion, the Biere de Gardes all tasted like scaled down versions of saisons. All the beers were pretty good but anytime you have a tasting of 10+ beers of the same or similar styles, you can expect your palette to get a little burnt out on those flavors.

In addition to all the good beer, we met some interesting people as well. Sammy and I weren’t formally introduced to everyone so we made friends as we went along. JJ’s friend Rich is a great guy and amateur photographer. Then there was Emi and her boyfriend the rockstar (not really a rockstar but he does play in a band). At times, I found myself wanting to chime in on some of the beer-related topics that JJ was talking about but I felt the need to check myself and keep my comments to a minimum unless I was asked directly. This is JJ’s event after all and I just wanted to be respectful and let the hostess host her party.

Sammy and I ended up leaving the party at around 11pm when we walked over to Toronado. I am definitely envious about JJ’s digs as she lives within walking distance of a great beer bar. How cool is that? At Toronado, we were surprised to see a host of beer judges still there. Needing something renew our palettes, we order a glass of Rodenbach Grand Cru. Nothing like a sour beer to get you going again.

I can’t stress enough how cool and laid back the beer community is. All weekend long Sammy and I were making what I felt were good connections with the other beer judges. The conversations were fun and it was great getting to know everyone. And, AND, we get to drink beer the whole time.

I could go on with the play by play but I’m sure everyone is bored by now. I commend you for getting this far. That being said, this was a great weekend, all made possible by Samuel Adams and the Boston Beer Company.

2008 Samuel Adams Longshot Weekend (click here for full gallery)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 1:37 am and is filed under Competitions, Samuel Adams Longshot. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.