It’s rare for me to get up early on Saturday mornings. It’s enough that I have to get up early during the week for work, I don’t want to do so during my weekends. But today I made an exception. Of course, it’s beer related.
Sammy and I got up at at 7am to get ready to head over to Santa Cruz to take the BJCP exam. She had initially planned to take the BJCP exam but after failing miserably on the practice, she decided against it. As a BJCP judge, you are always welcome to retake that test to improve your ranking at a reduced price. As an added bonus for passing the first time, you can choose which part you want to take; the tasting or the written. Seeing as I haven’t really studied, I opted for the tasting portion.
Santa Cruz Ale Works was kind enough to open up the brewery and allow us to take the exam there. I had the opportunity to try their beers for the first time on Saturday. I will end up doing a Beer in Review on them at a later date but I will say that I enjoyed their pale ale and IPA. I think it’s always cool when pro-brewers open up their places for home brewers. Many pros often start out as home brewers and it’s great when they can share their professional experiences.
I’ve written about taking the BJCP exam before but I’ll paraphrase again. Taking the BJCP exam is an exercise in brute force memorization. The successful exam taker will be able to memorize a great deal of information (various beer styles) and build relationships between their sub-styles. The successful exam taker will have taken the practice exams to get used to writing things by hand. Computers make us a little dumb when it comes to writing things down but let me tell you first hand that your hands will cramp after writing for 3 hours straight.
With regards to the tasting portion, there is no substitute for experience. Doing well is a matter of learning the major points of each style. You have to train your palette to discern the flaws from the good stuff. The most important aspect of being a beer judge is to make recommendations to the home brewer as to how they can improve their beers. More often than not, home brewers enter their beers not because they’re looking to win but because they’re looking for feedback from their trained peers. It’s the feedback that home brewers really look for when they get their scores back. Once you’re familiar with a style, it’s pretty easy to figure out which is a good beer. The hard part is trying to figure out what’s wrong, if anything at all, and how to fix it.
I will be honest in saying that my tasting skills have been improved but it will be a lifelong effort to improve. There are some flavors I am still learning to recognize, there are still many flaws I am still learning to discern. I am constantly learning about home brewing and the brewing process so that I can give accurate feedback to those people I judge. In any event, I hope I did well enough to improve my ranking within the BJCP.
Below are some pics from the event. As always, let me know if you have any questions regarding anything I’m writing about. I will do my best to answer them and if I can’t find the answer myself, I’ll do my best to find out for you.
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