The National Homebrew Competition, put on by the American Homebrewer’s Association, is one of the largest, if not the largest, international homebrew competition in the world. This year there were over 5000 entries and I signed up for my opportunity to judge some of the entries. Last year, this event was held at Devil’s Canyon Brewing Company in Burlingame. At the time, Sammy and I were both stewards at the competition but this year, I was a judge and she was a steward.
This year West Regionals were held at Lodi Beer Company in Lodi, California. From where I live, Lodi is about 1.5 hours away. With judging scheduled to start at 9:30am, Sammy and I were on the road by 7am. Even though it was a tough and long drive, we arrived in Lodi by 9am. I thought we were early but it would seem that half the judges were already there.
Lodi Beer Company is a very nice looking brewpub. Once you walk in through the front doors, you are greeted by two copper brew kettles. Surveying the dining area further, you can see all the beer-related artwork up on the brick walls. The artwork is of their regular beer styles, in label form, painted on their brick walls. There’s a lot of decorative iron work throughout as well as ornate woodwork. Judging was being held in a backroom that served as dining overflow, I think. Even though the brew kettles are visible in the front, I believe the actual brewing is done downstairs in their basement.
As a side note, the owners of the place are pretty good friends of BJCP Grandmaster Judge John Watson. From what John has told me, they all studied to be BJCP judge together. John went on to become a GrandMaster 2 judge while the owners decided they’d rather just make beer so they moved to Lodi and started a brewpub.
Running a competition of this size takes a lot of work and coordination. I’m probably forgetting a few people but here’s how a competition basically gets organized. There’s a competition organizer who organizes the entire event. There’s a site coordination that acts as a liason between the BJCP and the site of the competition judging. There’s a cellar master who handles and keeps the beers in optimal condition before and during the event. There are us judges who judge the homebrews, note our impressions and give feedback when applicable. Last but not least, there are the stewards who are lifeblood of the event. They take the beers to the judges and bring the beers back. They also pick up our scoresheets and double check our math. Without the stewards help, these competitions would run much, much more rough. Did I mention that all these people are volunteers? Yep, that’s right. None of us get any compensation for doing what we do. It’s all “for the love” and to help our fellow homebrewers improve their beers. Okay, I’m not being completely truthful, we do get some compensation in the form of food as Lodi Beer Company was kind enough to provide lunch for us as well as one free beer.
We were informed that we would be judging two flights of beers today. The first flight was to consist of at least 11-12 beers while the second afteroon flight would be about 5-6 beers. As I’ve found over the past year, judging usually happens in groups of 3. 3 is a good number of judges to have as the third judge is kinda like the “tie-breaker”. Because of the large number of entries in this competition, we were assigned into juding pairs. Some of the styles with a higher number of entries may have gotten 2 judging pairs but, for the most part, each style got a single judging pair. Unlike competitions in the past, all beers, regardless if we had passed them onto the Best of Show (BOS) round or not, were capped. This adjustment was implemented to preserve the beers further. Unlike other competitions, there a very limited number of bottles to go around so we had to be judicious with our samples.
We were assigned to judge various beer styles by the event coordinator. As names were being called out, I commented to a fellow judge that it seemed like we were getting drafted. To me, it felt like I was getting drafted into the NBA. You always want to get drafted into one of the more interesting styles, like Belgian Strong Ales or Sour Ales, and hoped to avoid other styles like American Lagers. I got “drafted” to judge the fruit beer category.
Fruit beers are an interesting bunch. A good fruit beer is an exercise in balance. You want to be able to taste the fruit in the beer without compromising the flavors or character of the base beer style. Some styles lend themselves to fruit additions better than others but in theory, all beer styles can have fruit added to them. Each judge is given a BJCP style guideline they can refer to during judging. The fruit beer style guideline basically says that a good fruit beer is balanced between the fruit character with the base beer character. As our judging group found out, this style guideline is woefully inadequate. Thankfully two of the judges brought their complete BJCP style guidelines for us to refer to. Considering that the beers we judged ranged from something as light as a Light American Lager all the way up to a Stout, these complete guidelines were a lifesaver.
Because none of the homebrewers have received their feedback yet, I don’t feel it would be appropriate to list the beers I had. I can say that the quality of beers a judge will be given is all about the luck of the draw. In my flight, the highest rated beer scored a 30. The other judging pair had a beers that scored 39.5, 37 and 33. I heard another judge say that for every high quality beer he had, had a corresponding bad beer. Unlike some of the other competitions I’ve judged, we all had to do a mini-BOS to decide what beers to pass onto the final round. Judging a BOS round is much easier than normal as we don’t have to re-score the beers. Judges take all the beers on the table and pretty much decide what beer best exemplifies the style, at least for a style BOS.
After our lunch break, I was reassigned to a different group. This time, I was drafted to judge Smoke and Wood-Aged beers. As with fruit beers, Smoke and Wood-Aged beers can have a wide variety. In this afternoon flight, we had 25 beers to judge, thankfully there were 4 judging pairs so the workload was equally distributed. My afternoon flight was much better than my morning flight but a lot of that had to do with the beer style versus the quality of beers. I think the highest rated beer of the afternoon for me scored about 33. As with the morning, the judging pair to my left had quite a number of good beers. The one thing that I found was a problem with judging this style was that some of the brewers didn’t list a base beer style for which we should be judging against. As per the rules, homebrewers were supposed to list what special ingredients they used. Some beers had just about everything listed except the base beer style. This makes judging difficult as we can say the beer was pretty good but at the same time, we could be judging from an incorrect premise. At the end of the day, we have to judge the beer on its own merits and truthfully, you can usually tell what the base beer is, well kind of anyway.
As with the fruit beers, smoke and wood-aged beers are difficult to make as well. Balance is a key, more so for wood-aged beers than smoked beers. Just like the fruit, you want to avoid the wood character from becoming dominant while trying to put enough in to be noticeable in the first place. Wood-aged beers are also interesting in that people add a bunch of different stuff in their beers to augment certain flavors. While I have no problem with this practice, I must say that balance is key. Personally, I like these secondary flavors to be a background note to the base beer style. Think of them as layers of complexity that are pulled back as the beer is allowed to warm and grow in sophistication. While it’s nice to notice things right off the bat, it’s also cool to discover things as you go along.
At the end of my second flight, I finally had the opportunity to cash in my one, free drink ticket for a Lodi beer. All throughout the day I have been surveying my fellow judges about the quality of the “house” beers. Unfortunatey I have to say reviews have been mixed. Some of the better beers were met with reserved praise (as in, “okay”, “eh” and “drinkable”) while the worst were generally noted to have some sort of defect or two or three. I ordered a doppelbock. Simply put a doppelbock is going to have a complex malt character and be very clean, meaning, it has no esters (fruit character). The malt character may be toasty but roasted is inappropriate. My doppelbock poured out like a soda. It sat in my pint glass with no head and a few bubbles clinging desperately to the side of the glass. It was essentially flat. While the beer was malty, it had a noticeable roasted malt character and a tart sourness in the finish. All who tried it agreed that it wasn’t a good example of the style. From what I’ve heard throughout the day, Lodi Beer Company were having some issues with “critters” but were able to get everything cleaned out to spec. I guess we were on the last couple of barrels of the old stuff.
Sammy ordered the house framboise and liked it. It had the right color, flavor and tartness. Nothing mind-blowing but pretty good. In fact, I think most judges that day ordered the framboise. The one thing you can count on with a group of beer judges is that if there’s a good beer in the house, word spreads fast. As with many breweries I’ve had poor, initial experiences with, I will be visiting Lodi Beer Company again in the hopes that these out-of-style beers were just flukes. Call me a bleeding heart for being so forgiving but I like to try and support craft brewers.
I would like to say that, overall, judging at the NHC West Regionals was a very good experience. I would like to thank Lodi Beer Company for allowing us to judge at their location. The food they served for us was good and we all appreciate it. Once things got going, the actual judging itself went smoothly after working out a few early hiccups. This is a testament to the stewards and organizing staff for keeping things going like a machine. Lastly, I’d just like to say to any homebrewer who is getting back a scoresheet from either myself or another judge. The BJCP is primarily an all-volunteer organization. My wife and I drove 1.5 hours up and back of our own accord and on our own dime to help support the homebrewing community. In fact, most of us did. We do this because we all love beer and we all would like to see the quality of homebrewing increase. Please keep this in mind when you receive your scoresheets. I can’t speak for any other judge but I do my best to give the most accurate and complete feedback I can get. This includes suggestions for improvement. I put my email on each and every scoresheet so feel free to email me, or any other BJCP judge, with any questions you may have.
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.
