BJCP Style Guidelines

What hoops are you referring to? For me, I only enter beers that clearly fit into categories. Pretty simple. I also enjoy making beers to style. If I have a beer that doesn't clearly fit a category, I dont enter it. In my opinion, if you have to try somewhat hard to figure out what category to put it in, you probably shouldn't enter it, or put it in category 23. The exception would be it fits well in multiple categories. Due to the subjectivity and inexperience level of beer judging, it can be inconsistent, but that is the nature of the game. It is what it is. If people cant deal with that, they shouldn't enter any beers. I'll complain for a second than forget about it.

 

I wouldn't say you have to jump through that many hoops, particularly if the comp is local. Usually, you just register online, pay 6 bucks per entry, print out a couple labels and then dump two bottles off at a local homebrew shop. Then, you wait a month or two. It's fairly painless, and can be very helpful.

 

Submit for beers that you think are good, that hit a defined style guideline for every conceivable facet: color, aroma, taste, mouthfeel, all the stats and numbers. Just don't expect to win any awards for beers that are good but don't meet those criteria. Either way, it's good objective feedback, which is hard to get any other way.

 

Thanks for replying; I figure I'll enter some comps one day but it's not a big deal for me like it is for some people. I'm sure most of the judges are great and the setup is about as close to fair as you can get, but those style guidelines seem pretty bullish if you're not brewing "to style".

 

Disagree, a high score is a quality beer that also met the target. I would though say that a low score may not necessarily indicate low quality beer, but you need to read your judging sheets to make that determination as it could be dinged for being well made, but not stylistically accurate.

 

“I would though say that a low score may not necessarily indicate low quality beer…” I agree 100% with that!

I think that @barfdiggs post “…instances where one has scored highly and the other was trashed…” bears that out exactly. The same ‘quality’ beer had a high score and a low score.

Cheers!

 

Well, yeah. If you're not brewing to style, I wouldn't bother entering. You can enter in 23, but I think it's pretty hard to use comments from 23 to help you improve your beers, because there's less of a defined standard for the judges to judge against and comment on. Say you enter a Bacon Infused IPA. Pretty hard to judge hop flavor and aroma through the bacon. "Robust pork flavor up front, yielding to Crushed Cape Gooseberry in the finish." Right. I think 23, in contrast to other categories, is really a crapshoot.

 

I'm not a Grandmaster, and probably won't be for another couple years at least, but as always: if anyone wants to send me their beer and ask for BJCP style feedback, I'll give it. I won't even charge you $7.

cheers--
--Michael

 

I'm not sure that list is any improvement on the current 2008 list

with a couple exceptions...Scottish 90 is a joke