Home Brew Judge

[c37703]

I have been asked to be a judge of the Home Brew section of the Orange Show just after Easter. I have been a keen brewer of Coopers for about five years now.

 

 

 

Do you have any criteria I could use to decide the best beer. And any hints

 

 

 

Simon

[rossm]

Get me ! Get Me!.........................Please get me

[Kip]

The Henty Show Society dropped the HB comp this year because they couldn't get any judges. When I asked about this they offered me the job of organising it for Feb 06. I also will need some guidance, marking criteria, score weightings etc as I train the panel of Judges I will have to find; so any advice from the experts will be much appreciated.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, I've got this year's entries all dressed up with nowhere to go.

 

 

 

Can geographic outsiders enter the Orange Show?

 

 

 

Contact person?

 

Lodgement details/ place time?

 

Fees ? etc

 

 

 

rotsaruck

 

 

 

Kip

[kieran]

never done it myself, but if having a go at it myself (with no prior juding knowledge at all), I'd look at stuff like:

 

pouring ability, head retention, how the head sits on the top of the beer, the color, if possible, the thickness of the beer (giving a clue to how well racked the beer was, if it was intended to be racked), the aroma of the beer in the glass, the taste of the beer on the palette, the aftertaste of the beer and any lingering flavours or aftertastes. I'd probably give each of them a nominal rating, and mark the beer after judging all those points individually. First off though, you need to define classes I reckon, ales, lagers, and within those, different styles, wheats, darks, porters, etc. Then its easier to compare apples with apples, and not apples (eg. an american ale) with oranges (eg. a porter).

 

Anyone with any experience be able to tell me if I'm even close?

[PB2]

Try doing a google search on "beer tasting".

[Wort]

Try signing up for this Beer judge corseor just check it out :)

 

 

 

And another good link that might give you an idea on how to judge different styles.

 

 

 

Hope this helps

[William]

A few years ago I did a bit of research on beer tasting and judging, including getting notes from 2 breweries (Coopers and the dreaded West End)

 

 

 

The consolidated notes are under the "beer wisdom" menu at cooperspubs.com.

 

 

 

The direct link for the notes on how to conduct a beer tasting is :

 

http://www.cooperspubs.com/tastingnotes.htm

 

 

 

Our results from a comprehensive Coopers tasting are at :

 

http://www.cooperspubs.com/tastingapril2000.htm

 

 

 

Hope this helps :-)

[kieran]

Thanks for that William.

 

 

 

Just a quick question though?

 

 

 

I'm just wondering if the judges were told what the beer was before they drank it? It seems as though they were told - if I read the website correctly. Just wondering why this was done? Its been shown time and time again that something as simple as a name suggestion can change people's perceptions (or misconceptions) of how they judge something. If the judges were full time coopers drinkers, it wouldn't be hard for them to pick them out anyway, I guess. So yeah.. ?

 

 

 

The birrel got a bit of a pasting in the test.. :P I drank that for a while as I had to go off Alc for medical reasons.. it was the closest thing to a beer that the quack would let me drink! :D

[William]

Hi Kieran,

 

Yes, you are correct. We cheated. Mea Culpa.

 

Our notes on how to correctly taste state that it has to be blind - no peeking.

 

 

 

But for the tasting of coopers - well, it was ONLY Coopers and we are all big fans and we couldn't resist knowing what it was :-) NOt forgetting that there were tipped / untipped and aged samples in there as well.

 

 

 

And as for Birrell - we forgot about it until the end. So it was tasted after the Stouts etc (as you can see from the order they are listed - which was the tasting order). So it took a hammering. (and so did we by then!)

 

 

 

So in summary - do what the notes say, not what we did :)