Even with a presence in more than 60 countries and San Diego boasting one of the highest concentrations of certified beer judges, the acronym BJCP doesn’t often ring a bell among common beer drinkers. As a student of the game, I want to take you on a journey outlining how the Beer Judge Certification Program has opened thousands of people’s palates to the diverse world of beer and strongly influenced the craft-beer world as we know it.
Originally a joint venture of the American Homebrewers Association and Home Wine and Beer Trade Association, the BCJP came to fruition in 1985 as a means to establish well-rounded judges in order to improve on the quality of homebrewed beer. By soliciting the qualified, unbiased reviews and feedback needed to improve their recipes, homebrewers raised the standard for beers being produced at all levels. Now, BJCP evaluation is applied to homebrewed and commercial beer as well as mead and cider.
“Without BJCP and homebrewing, there would be no San Diego beer scene,” says AleSmith Brewing Head Brewer and National BJCP Judge Anthony Chen, who has coordinated certification classes and study groups for the better part of a decade. “Most of the region’s original brewery owners are both homebrewers and BJCP-registered judges.” Chen’s opinions are echoed by scores of local industry professionals, and I couldn’t more whole-heartedly agree.
There are various areas BJCP students work on—before and after certification—to become and remain well-rounded BJCP judges. They are the starting point and guideposts as we start our journey toward certification and evaluation excellence.
1. Calibrating Your Senses
I liken embarking on this life-long program to training for a triathlon. In running, anyone can put one foot in front of the other at a rapid pace. Similarly, anyone can drink a beer. But focusing one’s energy on either endeavor so that every moment of the experience is useful and efficient is difficult. In the case of beer judging, it’s about programming one’s mind to go from drinking mode to evaluation mode.
Much like a runner taking their mark in the blocks in anticipation of the starting gun, beer judges should have a routine that forces them to acutely focus on the task ahead. Examples include squaring one’s shoulders to the table, practicing relaxed breathing, being aware of ambient distractions and swirling beer samples counterclockwise in order to “flip” one’s muscle memory. And that’s before the beer’s characteristics even come into play. Once they do, there’s an entirely different set of factors to take into consideration and time-tested methods for uniformly judging samples.
Evaluation of aroma is key. With hundreds or thousands of aromatic compounds racing at one’s olfactory, the prescribed approach is to take a gentle sniff of the beer, then try to access one’s personal “rolodex” of sensory memories. It should be easy to find the primary aroma of a beer. That can be as simple as ascribing a vague descriptor such as “citrus.” But if a beer smells of citrus, a good judge then works to identify what specific type of fruit it’s reminiscent of (grapefruit, orange, tangerine, lemon, lime, etc.) as well as that bouquet’s level of intensity. From there, they concentrate on secondary or tertiary notes. The same steps apply to the tasting portion, as well.
“The only difference between you and another judge is how connected you are to your own palate and your ability to interpret that in an objective manner,” says Chen. “We all have taste buds, and no one’s are better than someone else’s. It’s simply who is more in tune with themselves.”
Pro Tip: Seek out the beers reviewed in publications like Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine and compare your notes to those of their professional tasting panel. There is always room to get inspired by—and perhaps even draw from—the diction of qualified beer evaluators.
2. Beer-style Familiarity
Downloading the BJCP Style Guidelines (the latest edition is from 2015) will unveil a world of styles waiting to be explored. I took Chen’s BJCP prep class back in the winter of 2017. Utilizing the freshest commercial examples per style, our group would read the style guidelines aloud, sample the beers, then discuss intensities and various other sensory experiences unique to the particular style. If attempting this solo, such a beer adventure can easily become a costly endeavor. Also, a heartbreaking amount of beer will be poured down the drain in the interest of avoiding palate fatigue. The struggle is real.
Pro Tip: Make sure you fully grasp the information in the Overall Impression and Style Comparison sections from the BJCP Style Guidelines! Until you are physically able to try a particular style, use the information provided to paint a picture of how the style would present itself to the olfactory and taste buds.
3. Providing Valuable Feedback
This final area harkens back to the primary motive of BJCP. Once one’s senses have been dialed in and there is an educated understanding of a style’s characteristics, a judge must go even further to be able to provide accurate, knowledgeable, helpful commentary. This requires amassing an understanding of the ingredients and brewing processes involved in producing different styles.
This is where the rabbit hole steepens significantly. There are so many root causes of off-flavors or other deficiencies, and so many minor tweaks that can result in a better batch of beer. Understanding all of those technical nuances can be very difficult…but also incredibly interesting and utterly fascinating. The trick is identifying reliable sources for such information.
Besides picking the brain of a beer judge or reading books like How To Brew, why not take the advice of George Thornton, a National BJCP Judge and the owner of North Park’s The Homebrewer and Home Brewing Co. “I would tell aspiring judges to get in touch with their local homebrew club to find out when their next instructional class or judging event will take place.”
Local homebrew club QUAFF (Quality Ale Fermentation Fraternity) hosts monthly meetings where brewers talk about modern brewing topics. Those meetings currently take place over Zoom but will revert to in-person affairs following the pandemic. In addition to the wealth of knowledge one may extract from homebrew clubs, they also provide incredible networking opportunities and are typically a lot of fun. So, finding the right club for you is a no-brainer.
In conclusion, BJCP is one of the most rewarding programs of its kind because it is something you can continuously work at even after getting certified. Since brewing is a progressive medium, there is always something new to learn or, if one is so inclined, teach. The three areas I laid out have pushed people to intimately understand classic styles while still allowing them to appreciate the creativity of modern brewers.
If you are curious on the steps needed to officially enroll in the program, some of the helpful members of the San Diego beer community that can guide you excel within the program or what a BJCP test looks like, check back to my next San Diego Beer News column.