I'll be administrating a BJCP tasting exam next year and from what I read the BJCP would prefer that a beer be "naturally" bad than using a doctored beer. So I've been thinking, what are some ways to make a crappy beer? Any additional "hints" you can think of? Make a beer now that will not age well. Hopefully picks up oxidized charactecter. Sparge with 190 F water. Make it astringent. Boil for 15 minutes only. hop utilization low, no hot break, cloudy beer. Cool to 100 F, then let stand for 1 hour with lid open to elements. Increase chance of infection. Clean fermentor, but do not sanitize, increase chance of infection bottle beer in clear glass and let sit in the sun for 2-3 days. Skunk aroma/ flavor. For those of you not familiar with the BJCP Tasting Exam. You judge 6 beers in 90 minutes. 2 of the 6 beers need to have flaws. And for those new to brewing, don't do these things on the list.
I'd recommend coupling hot sparge water with high wort pH and collection of runnings well below the point of 1.008 in order to get truly noticeable astringency / tannin extraction.
I will be taking the test in February. Everyone I know does it by dosing the samples. Purposely brewing faulted beers sounds like tons of work, lots of money, and nothing to show for it. I would brew good beers, and take parts of them to make your bad beer if you don't do the dosing method. Take 1/2 gallon of your chilled wort from a 5.5 gallon batch, pitch a low cell count, and get it warm while treating the other 5 gals as normal. This should give you esters. Take a batch of beer that is in active fermentation and pull off 1/5 gallon and stick it in the fridge, should get some acetaldehyde and/or diacetyl that way. Bottle a 6 pack from a real beer and purposefully oxidize it. Bottle another into clear bottles and leave in the sun for 30 minutes. Pull some lager off into bottles young in the lagering stage for cloudy beer (and probably a few other faults) Pull a growler fill of a good beer but add some Berlinerweisse to it as well for Lactic. Make malt vinegar with 1/2 gallon of beer. Spike a 6 pack of bottles with Brett. Honestly, dosing actually works the best. You can dose a sample to full flavor, pour everyone a 4oz pour, everyone drinks 2oz to get a feel for what the flaw is, then top off with 20z pure beer, drink 2oz, top off with 2oz of pure, drink 2oz, top off. This way you can see how low each person can go tasting that flaw. This gives you closer to the real version, as most of the beers I have judged aren't diacetyl bombs or acetaldehyde monsters or malt vinegar or super funky gushers, but are decent beers with small amounts of these flaws present. Purposefully making a really bad beer won't really help them pick it out in a good beer that was simply bottled a little early, or had bad temp control, or pour sanitation, or packaging/storage issues, etc.
Should brew a DMS corn bomb beer. And a beer with a portion of chlorinated water. No starters and pitch hot is another classic. Sounds fun!
Just trying to follow the BJCP's preferred method. Per http://www.bjcp.org/forms/Exam_Administration_Procedures_Judging.pdf Two of the beers should have distinctly noticeable faults or characteristics (avoid threshold flavor faults/characteristics including mildly stale examples), such as the examples in this list... Naturally flawed beers or blends of different homebrewed beers are strongly preferred. Doctoring beers to obtain these characteristics is discouraged due to variable results, but if there is no alternative, the doctoring procedures outlines in Section II.E of the BJCP Study Guide should be used
I'd like to see all the things that we recommend specifically against here used on BJCP judges or candidates. Not overblown versions of the bad stuff, just exactly like noobs are likely to make the mistakes. Pitching temperature is one, fermentation temperature another, under/overpitch, oxidation etc.
Here are a couple of easy things to try.... Oxidized beer: Open any beer, drink half, recap, shake, place beer on shelf, open the next day, instant oxidized beer. It will also bring back memories of your college days. Autolyzed beer: Make a starter with any yeast, or take some yeast from a batch after primary. Fill a jar half full with it, top off the jar with beer of your choice, and place in fridge. This will take a week or two. Open jar and smell and taste the beer, it will have the unmistakable flavors and smells of autolyzed beer.
After having taken the tasting exam last January, I can tell you they DO doctor beers...we had a stout/porter that was spiked with acetic acid (vinegar)...very noticeable to the point of me not being able to properly evaluate the rest of the beer. The other flaw was only picked up by the proctors (which makes me kind of suspicious)...it was chlorine/chloromines...which I have a very low threshold for, but did not pick up. That one was probably doctored also, but not covered properly and ended up being at threshold levels most likely. Commercial beers were also used...I still remember that KristalWeizen (that had no banana) I passed, but will not be a Grand Poobah anytime soon
Maybe you could ask the BA homebrewing community to send you bottled samples. Most people drain pour their bad batches, but some may have a few bottles around hoping they'll get better with age. For example, I just poured out the last of a porter that clearly had the 'wet cardboard' taste from oxidation.
If faulty packaging is an item that is judged in beer competition, then I can supply a case of over-carbonated brown ale that is guaranteed to be a gusher. I labeled is as 'Nuclear Brown.'
I was thinking about naming this beer "Tribute". Tenacious D fans will understand. "This is not the worst beer in the world, no. This is just a tribute".
I brewed a cider once that went bad on me. Protip: even though ypu dont want to boil the juice so you can get those nice aromatics, you should still pasteurize the beer. The cider I used was local, unfiltered, and unpasteurized, and I tossed it straight into the fermenter and pitched. Came out incredibly acetic, just shy of apple cider vinegar.
The guy who set up our test did not have Diacetyl beers. His rational is that there is a high % of the population that is blind to that, so why penalize them. Diacetyl is also allowed in lower levels in some beers, so if you have an example it should be in the no diacetyl category for a style.
Anybody else think its odd that the bjcp claim is that dosing regular beer with synthetic off flavors would somehow lead to significantly more variable results than naturally flawed homebrews?
