So I take my BJCP exam on August 9th. Three hours, ten essay questions, fifteen judging process true/false questions, and four tastings. 20+ style categories, with multiple sub-styles in each style.
In addition to all of my studying for this exam, I’ve started a new job, I’m working on some freelance projects, starting Baltibrew — meeting is today at 6:30 pm at the Wind Up Space — writing a proposal and conceptualizing slides for a talk I want to do at Ignite Baltimore 4, and doing the best I can not to lose my mind as my wife and mother-in-law drag me around to look at houses. Saturday’s annual customer appreciation day at the Thirsty Brewer should help calm me down a little bit. Once I’ve plowed through all of this I’ll actually have time to post more “How do I do that?,” and maybe even a bit on specific styles.
To prepare for all of this, I asked our class leader— Les White — to set up a practice tasting and subsequent judging in the fashion we would expect to be tested on. My classmate and friend Stefin Clapham joined us at Max’s and we blew through three tastings.
Things did not go as well as I would have liked in terms of my scoring — all too generous — but Les did say that he thought my commentary was pretty good. At least I know I can work on becoming more familiar with the specifics of the scoring ranges, so my verbal impressions match my qualitative “quantifications.”
Most embarrassing though, was the fact that I NOTED that there wasn’t much of a spicy, Saaz hop character on the beer Les told us to judge as a Czech Pilsener, but didn’t catch on that he’d actually given us a German Pils. It sounds like a mere technicality to the uninitiated, but there’s a pretty major difference, and I should have caught it. I have to be better on the exam.
I need to remember that an “outstanding beer,” that is a world class example of style is a 45 -50; “excellent” is 38 -44, and exemplifies the style well, but requires minor fine-tuning; a “very good” beer is a 30-37, and is generally within style parameters, but has some minor flaws; a “good” beer is a 21 – 29, misses the mark on style and/or exhibits minor flaws; a “fair” beer is a 14 – 20, and has off flavors, aromas or major style deficiencies; and finally a “problematic” beer is a 0-13 and major off flavors and aromas dominate. It probably would have helped if I’d remembered to bring a scoresheet.
I’m still debating whether it makes sense to give each individual scoring category a number, then add them up for a total, or do the opposite, and come up with what kind of score I think the beer is and then fill in the blanks on aroma, appearance, flavor, mouthfeel, and overall impression. I can see benefits to both methods.
We tasted an American Pale Ale, and judged it as such, but I thought it was pretty clearly an American IPA, then the “Czech” Pilsener that was actually a German Pils, and lastly a Northern Brown Ale, which I finally scored pretty well on.
It was cider night at Max’s Tuesday beer social, so I also got to try a few really impressive ciders. A couple of French ones, a sweet British cider, and a really tart Basque cider. Most of them exhibited an interesting Brettanomyces-like character that was pretty pleasant. Very glad I didn’t get full glasses, or I would have been in real trouble trying to bike the two and a half miles home.
I’m making flash cards for the styles, the judging specifics, memorizing the mnemonic devices that Les provided us with at our review session a couple weeks ago, and I’m hoping my wife will be gracious enough to repeatedly quiz me for the next week and a half. Wish me luck.
Tags: BJCP Exam Practice, BJCP Study, Cider, July Baltibrew Meeting, Max's Taphouse, Thirsty Brewer Customer Appreciation Day
Hey,
THanks for the input on the BJCP exam. I am going to take it for the 1st time in Oct. and am mostly doing self-study. I feel like I know the styles reasonably well, and have been an active hombrewer for a long time so the tasting and evaluation skills are there on some level, but I really find it difficult to memorize the numeric style parameters (OG, FG, ABV, IBU, SRM) for 80 styles. How necessary did you find this? The exam format doesn’t seem to indicate that you have to know these cold, but the BJCP study guide and other things I’ve read make it seem important. What do you think?
Thanks!
I didn’t really find cold memorization of each OG, FG, IBU, ABV, SRM, etc. to be particularly important, but I do believe fully that knowing these numbers in general is very helpful with the recipe formulation question that appears on every exam. Just be aware of the basics of the styles for this, and have an idea how strong most of these styles are, how hoppy they are, and do your best to be able to translate that into a number that falls within the ranges you see in each beer’s vital statistics.
Also, make sure you memorize the judging levels, and how many points are required for each. Those are easy points.
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