Draft of New BJCP Style Guidelines Posted

Thanks for posting. Gordon Strong's talk at the NHC (available on Chop and Brew) is probably worth watching before trying to digest this document.

 

so much info. Head is swimming. (might be the beer) Feel like a trainee again.
I like some of the groupings; others seem more awkward. And yes, I'm aware competitions can rearrange them how they please.

 

Got Kellerbier in there. Weird split between Munich and Franconian with the former being described as light-colored and the latter amber-colored. There are lots of Franconian Kellerbiers that are light and even more that are dark. I can see a LOT of misunderstandings arising from this....

 

Okay. In a few styles, there are "Style Comparisons" specifically contrasting the style vs. a Czech Pilsner. Yet there is no style in the guidelines actually called a Czech Pilsner. That's really the only thing I looked at so far, but it's not filling me with confidence out of the gate.

 

That why there is a review period. I have pointed put that I can't find the Czech Pils on the AHA forum, as I have never registered for the BJCP forum. Got many that most Americans have never had, but Czech Pils was left out in the edit. German Pils has been assigned to the pale bitter category, so maybe they forgot Czech? CAP is now in PPL and is in historic.

There are some styles represented now that people on this forum were pointing out were missing from the 2008 guidelines.

The research on Kentucky Common shows that it was not sour, and that is from the primary sources of the brewers logs. No sour mashes were used, so that is homebrew myth.

Peated malts in the Scottish styles are pointed out to be inaccurate and inappropriate.

 

Sounds like a typical document we might have in one of our legislatures (national or state or local, it's all the same). It winds up getting drafted by politicians and lawyers when it should have been drafted by scientists and engineers.

 

I see 1C cream ale is supposed to have little to no hop aroma. That's why I made a Classic American Creme Ale.

Taste, appearance and body were clearly in the new 1C creme ale neighborhood. Tho it was quite dry, it had a subtle corn sweetness from the flaked corn, and a light grainy maltiness from the 6-row (recall it was 9 lbs 6-row and 3 lbs flaked corn). Clarity was as perfect as I've ever made, carbonation was pretty high and bubbles were rising, so it met most of the specs. However, quantifying the hop aroma as "low to none" would have put me outside what's written on that document. Not that I actually give a flying heap of rat turds about whether my beers meet some arbitrary set of parameters set forth by some guys who drink a lot of beer either.

And I really do not think that my beer (one of my top six) was heavily hopped, overly hopped, or even slightly over hopped. The results and the popularity of the beer tell me all I need to know, it was spot-on perfect.

But if the parameter for hop aroma "low to none" were enforced very strictly, my brew would certainly have not matched up with the document. Now mind you I have yet to enter a competition, and unless it's some local thing, I don't have any plans to anytime soon.

But for those who enter competitions regularly, and those who judge: I'm wondering how many judges would have dinged it for "excessive" hops (which would, IMO, be failing to see the forest for the trees, or whatever the idiom is). Of course you can't actually taste it or smell it over the internet, but assume that "low to none" was clearly not applicable. I'm just curious, btw. I bet this stuff keeps some people up at night, drives some crazy, and others, like me, really don't care at all.

 

Czech pils wasn't left out. They are just not being consistent in what they are calling it. "3B Czech Premium Pale Lager" clearly *is* Czech Pils, but they keep referring to Czech Pils elsewhere in the guidelines.

side note: I can't be the only one who laughed to read that Fullers ESB is not in the strong bitter category anymore. I kinda understand it, but still...

 

OK, I stand corrected, I was looking for Pilsner Urquell as a commercial example and missed it, assumed it would be coming higher in the list.

 

my friend's cream ale just won a silver medal at NHC; I would describe it as slightly too bitter for style, but oh so refreshing and delicious. words like "low to none" can make judges who REALLY like a beer say "well, I'd call it medium, and it is highly carbed and there's not a lot of malt or esters here to hide it so its really being emphasized...so let's push it to mini-BOS and see what they think." If the mini-BOS judges have the same feeling, or are left with good but slightly flawed beers vs clean but perhaps slightly "out of style" beers, ya can end up with medals. Easily.

 

The beer is judged according to how close it comes to the documented characteristics. If you missed the target, you missed the target - it's that simple. If you enter a cherry pie into an apple pie contest because you prefer cherry, you lose. The people who are bothered by this simply don't understand the rules. I don't enter my Cream Ale into BJCP competitions anymore because it's strayed too far from the guidelines. If I want a ribbon for it, I might enter it into a "People's Choice" type of contest that a LHBS holds from time to time.

 

These are the types of competitions I would enter my beers into in a heartbeat, and for a couple reasons. "Local" often has characteristics similar to "good," especially when all things are equal but one is local and one is not*. Also local events can often use a boost from anyone and everyone who can contribute, so that's also a good thing to do. And - local events have a good chance of your meeting with someone who you might wind up collaborating with again in the near future. The list could go on....

I wanted to enter the LHBS's pale ale and IPA contest, but I didn't get my quadro-smash done in time. D'oh!

*example: RABC is local to me (less than 50 miles away). Even though I can get various beers from various states, and they're all plenty dark good, just like RABC, the local nature of RABC means less transportation costs, less carbon footprint from transportation, and fresher beer. So while RABC could not be "better" than say Deschutes if RABC didn't also have excellent beer, RABC does find itself collecting my purchasing dollars more often, and I would argue that it's because they are local. For one thing, RABC is almost always cheeper, and when I'm faced with two equal choices that differ only in that one's cheeper, well, I can add.

 

The BJCP competitions I enter now are largely 'local' in the sense that they're judged by most of the same people, mostly from my club and/or other local clubs (though Gordon Strong and a few other heavy hitters occasionally lend their skills). I see it mainly as a social event where my friends and I have an excuse to spend a Saturday tasting and talking beer. I view the competition aspect of it as more for bragging rights than anything else (I've got more ribbons/medals/certificates than I can display in my ManCave already! )

 

Now if it's mostly a social event, I'd probably have to do it. But always wanting to be the center of attention, I'd have to have my band come with a theme song. Involving beer, of course.

Might have to ressurect the ages old classic Motorhead-esque tune we wrote when we were about 19 (and couldn't even legally drink yet) called, fittingly, "More Beer!"

 

I've read the introduction and it's nice to see that the BJCP has taken criticisms to heart and is addressing them.That they are to be used as guidelines rather than specifications.
It's a pity they use CAMRA as authoritative-it ought to be but the person who writes the style guidelines has come under severe criticism at least twice and it saddens me that an organisation devoted to UK beer can get things so horribly wrong.
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Good Beer Guide among others.
I particularly liked finding this snippet;
"Germans think of ale as a type of English beer, and lager as a method of conditioning beer. So Germans would
typically speak of Kölsch as a top fermenting lager beer, not an ale."