2009 World Cup Pre-Liminary Judging at Firehouse Brewery

I was supposed to go to Beer School tonight. Didn’t happen for a number of reasons. Sammy needed to get some stuff taken care of before her Pacific Northwest roadtrip and my back was acting up again. The plan for Beer School tonight was to go through smoked, wood-aged, fruit, spiced/herb/vegetal, and specialty beers as well as some doctored beers and closing with a shortened practice exam. Exciting, I know. I’ll just have to go over these beers at another time.

Last night, I was able to judge a preliminary round of beers for the 2009 World Cup homebrew competition. We were originally were supposed to judge this round at BJCP Grand Master 2 judge John Watson’s place but I was able to convince Steve from Firehouse Brewery in Sunnyvale to let us judge there. Some of the judges who showed up had never been to Firehouse in the past and they got a treat when Steve game them a quick tour of his brewery.

Since this was a last minute thing, not too many judges showed up. It happens. Altogether there were 6 of us divided up into two groups of 3. Each group was given a flight of 8 beers to judge. In many competitions, there will be a number of judges available as well as stewards to assist with the flow of the competition. With such a low turnout, we ended up having to get the entries ourselves. It’s tragic, I know.

Actually, the number of judges who showed up was pretty low. Usually John (who’d be the event organizer) would be responsible for handling all the paperwork as well as stewarding for the handful of judges who do show up. He ended up judging. Firehouse brewmaster Steve ended up joining the second panel as well. Travis from www.sudsorduds.com, who showed up to help out in some capacity, ended up judging as well. To make sure everything was balanced John, Travis and I were on one panel while Steve (brewmaster), Steve (another judge) and Matthew were on the second panel.

For those new to beer judging, here’s how beer judging goes: we get a small sample of beer (about 3 oz or so) and we note how it looks, how it smells, how it tastes and how the mouthfeel is. The last category, named Overall Impression, is kind of a “catch all” for things that didn’t fit in the other categories. Personally, I use this category to list the ways the brewer can improve their beers. At least I try to anyway.

The category we judged last night was the Belgian Strong category. Normally this is a beer style that many judges are into, for good reason: Belgian Strong ales are wonderfully complex and tasty beers. Personally, I was looking forward to judging this round because of that reason. Also, I’ve always wanted to brew this style and getting to see how other homebrewers tackle these beer styles is interesting to me.

Unfortunately, the flight of beers I got didn’t have any standout examples. There were a few mistakes common to many of the samples I judged. In many cases. these beers lacked the malt complexity we were looking for in both the aroma and flavor. In many others, the color was incorrect as some weren’t dark enough while others were too dark for their respective styles. Lastly, carbonation and head retention were issues as well. Most samples were under carbonated and lacked a thick, moussey head that would leave a the trademarked “Belgian lace” on the glass edges. The other judging group had a few good examples that we were able to sample.

Whenever I tell people I’m a beer judge, an actual beer judge, people are always, “Awww man, that’s such a cool gig!”. While I think it is cool to be a beer judge, I have to tell people that it’s not all roses. For every good beer I get to taste there’s four, five, eight bad beers I have to get through. Sometimes we get perks, like being fed, while other times you get situations like last night which was a bare bones sort of affair. In any event, it doesn’t matter to me whether we have dozens of judges or half a dozen. It’s all about the beer and helping out fellow homebrewers.

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