I'm a Recognized Beer Judge!

by Jim Vondracek on 01/13/13

Last July, my friend Bill Goetz and I traveled to the Detroit-area and took the Beer Judge Certification Program's Tasting Exam.  A few days ago, I received this in the mail:

I'm in, with a score of 76 out of 100 possible points.  Bill also passed, as did my friends Lorena Evans and Scott Pointon. 

To qualify to take the tasting exam, we needed to first pass an online entrance exam.  Then for the tasting exam, we each evaluated six beers, as you would at a competition, and our evaluation sheets were compared with those filled out by proctors for the same beers.  The proctors are National and Master judges. 

Passing the tasting exam requires a score of 60, which qualifies me to be a Recognized Judge.  My score of 76 was high enough to qualify me for the next level up - Certified Judge - after I have gained more 'experience points' by judging in competitions.  The next level up is National Judge, which would require much more experience, retaking the tasting exam and getting a score of 80+ and then passing a written exam. 

 Bill and I decided to pursue this after last year's Brewers of South Suburbia's competition, the Chicago Cup.  He served as a steward at the competition, and I was a 'novice' judge.  There has been such growth in homebrewing that competitions find it challenging to recruit enough BJCP judges. 

Here's my BJCP card and pin:

After Bill and I both passed the online entrance exam, we began preparing for the tasting exam together.  It requires a knowledge of the official beer style guidelines, which are worthwhile reading for anyone who appreciates craft or handmade beer.  We also did some tastings together of beers in related styles - for example, in one of our sessions, we compared brown porters, with robust porters, with Baltic porters.  Similar, but different.

We also took a beer sensory class offered by Marty Nachel, a member of our club and author of a number of books.  His class, which was very helpful, focused on identifying off-flavors compounds, such as diacytl or oxidation. 

At the tasting exam, the very first beer was perhaps the worst beer I've ever tasted in my life!  It was supposed to be an Irish Red, but it was so badly infected as to be nearly undrinkable.  Other styles included in our tasting exam were an Octoberfest, Northern English Brown, Belgian Tripel, Bohemian Pilsner, and Robust Porter. 

My final scores for each of the beers we evaluated differed from the proctors' final scores by  4 - 7 points.

I'm signed up to judge at the Square Kegs competition in a couple of weeks and will also sign up for the Drunk Monk competition, another local Chicago competition.  The BOSS Chicago Cup is at the end of March and I'll judge at that again, too.