World Cup Pre-lims at Firehouse Part Dos

Last week I regaled you all with a captivating tale woven around the strands of excitement that make up a BJCP judge’s life. There was some tragedy (8 mostly OK beers in a row), comedy (they all seemed the same despite being different styles) and action (I wrote fast and furiously). Tonight was much of the same, except for the surprise ending. Have I got you hooked? Probably not but bear with me anyway.

First of all, a big THANK YOU to Firehouse brewmaster Steve Donohue for allowing us to take control of the banquet room upstairs and have our World Cup preliminary judging there. As always, Steve doesn’t have to be so kind to us homebrewers and BJCP judges but he is and we are thankful. Nothing wrong with the clubhouse at John’s place but being able to judge beer at a brewpub is a pretty sweet deal.

Steve has some interesting things in the works, actually. Tomorrow (or today as it were), he will be brewing up a Baltic Porter. Baltic Porters are interesting beers in that they are porters brewed with a lager yeast. He also has a couple of wood-aged beers in the works and is ramping up his sour ale program. Keep an eye out for this guy, he’s bring the sexy back to the south bay. In fact, the best way to keep up with him would be through his twitter accounts. Follow him.

This week we polished off the Belgian Strong category and all its sub-categories. This week, we had and ample number of judges. My crewed rolled 3 deep while the other group had 4 judges. We still stewarded own beers but having gone through this last week, everything ran much smoother this time around.

Personally, the biggest difference from this week and last week was the quality of beers. I don’t believe we passed anything forward last week but this time, we passed 3 (out of beers onto the next round. The beers in this week’s flight were of much higher quality, color was generally good while the flavors, spot on in some instances, were mostly ballpark. With a little bit of tweaking, a lot of these beers will be on their way to becoming something special. I can say that for my group, a Belgian Dark Strong moved forward, as did a Tripel and Belgian Golden Strong. The difference between second and third beers we passed forward was .33 points. Small margins of error. I hope these guys do well in the competition on Friday.

Being a BJCP judge means having to constantly keep up with your beer styles. Admittedly a big part of that is becoming very familiar with how each of the styles tastes like. In order to do that, one has got to drink, it’s that simple. One of the beers I had tonight I really enjoyed. I liked a lot of what was going on. At the very end, I had scored this beer relatively high. There was a 12-13 point spread and we needed to close the gap to being within 7 points. After a little bit of discussion, I adjusted my scores to reflect more accurately what this beer is and I realized I had been perceiving something wrong as something desirable. Even while judging, I still managed to learn something new. Isn’t that the goal every day?

In any event, the World Cup Finals are being held at Trumer Pils in Berkeley. Having just wrapped up a Pre-lim round, I think it’ll be fun to see how everything turns out. As much as I would’ve wanted to go, there’s the Firkin Festival happening at Triple Rock. Decisions, decisions.

Related posts:

1. 2009 World Cup Pre-Liminary Judging at Firehouse Brewery I was supposed to go to Beer School tonight. Didn’t...
2. World Cup 2008 Recap 2008 World Cup Afterparty Click to view gallery The Bay...
3. 2008 World Cup Finals and After Party I mentioned it some weeks ago but the Bay Area...
4. 30th Annual California State Homebrew Competition Pre-Lim The Annual California State Homebrew Competition is one of the...
5. GABF Pre-flight Post GABF. The Great American Beer Festival. This is the big...