By Dick Cantwell

Best Of Show

I’m willing to venture that nearly any of you is more conscientious than I am, which is to say that you’ve kept your end up where the home brewing community is concerned. You’re probably speaking to some club or other at least monthly, penning articles, responses and rebuttals in various club newsletters--gratis--offering substantial discounts to members in your pubs, sharing recipes and brewing whatever they tell you to brew. You’re also undoubtedly offering your services whenever asked as a judge at homebrew competitions. Or not. In all honesty I do try to render services to our small-batch brethren. I do speak to clubs periodically and I have at least agreed in principle to write things in a desktop-published journal or two. I will tell anybody anything they want to know about technique or recipes, at least insofar as I am able. Discounts, alas, are not really my department, and I’ve recently (and in this space, no less) touched on the taskmasterly rigors of the brew schedule.

But I hadn’t judged homebrew in years before being asked, not long ago, to sit on the panel for the Puyallup Fair, itself a fairly big deal in this neck of the woods if what you’re into is shockingly large livestock, a good-sized midway, lots of questionable food and major artist country music shows. I saw the biggest pig I’ve ever seen at the Puyallup Fair once, as well as some really interesting tableaux consisting entirely of vegetables, and word is that their bumper cars are unparalleled. I used to enter homebrew myself there, in fact. I even won ribbons, and cash prizes. The going rate in those days was five dollars for a blue ribbon, three for a red and one for a white. I still have a check, which I never cashed, filed away with the last paycheck (NSF) from my first brewing job. As I say, they asked me, and I agreed.

As many of you know, the differentiation between professional and homebrew judging is something of a can of worms. Hotter heads than mine have weighed in on the subject, some asserting that homebrew judges have no place at the professional judging table, owing to a lack of grasp of the practical demands of the allegedly for-profit brewing operation; others from the homelier side of the coin intimating that the only true guardians of pure brewing styles are those doing the deed in their kitchens, garages and basements, and that those of us who actually accept money for brewing are sullied by the hurly-burly of the bottom line. Do I have an opinion? You bet. I wouldn’t seek to enforce a prohibition of home brewing judges from professional panels, but I would ask of them that they refrain from the superior attitude I’ve seen mainly in semi-idle conversation. I took the BJCP exam myself several years ago, and merely did okay. I was marked down for penmanship, and while this is a skill desirable for the eventual decrypting of scrawled criticism and suggestion, I don’t think it makes me any less worthy a judge in terms of my palate, expertise or ability to express myself on any related subject. When I hoofed it around town looking for my first brewing job I carried with me a mixed six-pack of beers at the peak of their condition. As I had no professional experience at the time it struck me that I should both show that I had a grasp of a range of beer styles and display an understanding of the need to have everything tasting right at the same time. This is the kind of balance we need to see in addressing the issue of who belongs where, I think. Or as I’ve asserted so often before, why can’t everybody simply be more like me?

Seriously, though, I felt honored to be asked, and surprised, once I arrived, to see something like sixty people sitting at tables in well-ordered pairs, scribbling away. Simply getting there had been a bit of an ordeal, involving unfamiliarity with the area, extremely general directions, and walking the perimeter of an enormous fairgrounds with a woman clutching a shoebox, trying to find the pavilion where she could enter her doily. But I got there, and slid into my chair next to another latecomer, and was shortly presented with my day’s allotment of beers, seven bottles in three styles. Seven. That’s it.

The typical professional judging panel is substantially more rigorous and exacting, usually involving, for an opening round, eight to twelve beers in a single style. All of these are tasted by a panel of judges, more or less mutely, and commented upon in writing by each before a prescribed number are passed on to the next round by common agreement. Subsequent rounds are conducted similarly, until a general discussion determines the winners, however many there may be. It is possible, given the number of samples, to have wonderful beers cast aside and less worthy and possibly flashier ones be rewarded for idiosyncracy, though the idea—and usually the success—of the system makes flawed beers stand apart from their better-crafted companions.

Homebrew judging also involves a system of points—a few for this characteristic, several more for that, all of which are totted up to generate a supposedly objective rating and designation, ranging from poor to excellent. Except that frequently the judge doesn’t like what he or she sees once the addition is completed, and goes back to tinker with the ratings in order to bring the score into conformity with an opinion already formed.

Both systems have their merits when followed the way they are supposed to be; I’m merely pointing out a couple of things that over the years have struck me as a little, well, vulnerable where objectivity is concerned. An overly forceful, unprincipled or self-interested judge is capable of subverting either system, and it’s the responsibility either of an organizer, steward or table captain to see that steamrolling in any form is kept to a minimum. Both systems also disqualify any judge from evaluating beers in any category in which he or she has an entry.

But back to my seven beers. There were some porters, some pale ales, and a Belgian-style sour ale. Some were good, some were not, and my judging mate and I hashed out our scores, being somewhat careful not to experience things so divergently as to seem unschooled. Scores are averaged in order to further obfuscate this notion. We turned in our score sheets, shook hands, and were done. It was lunch time, and a good thing—our steward had eaten all our cheese.

For tasting and evaluating this mere handful of homebrews we were, as I said, fed lunch (which wasn’t at all bad—plus there was beer). We were also paid eighty dollars and given two complimentary passes to the Fair. I could have left then, but I was also tapped to judge best of show, which I was happy to do, having expected to be at the table all day, and figuring it was liable to be interesting. It was. There were a couple of great beers among the roughly ten which had been given sufficiently high marks to make the round, and the winner was a Märzen which had been sent—I kid you not—all the way from Texas.

I’ve always been fascinated by subcultures. We certainly have one, and they (homebrewers) do, too, as involved, arcane and dedicated as any attendant on any specialty. It’s good occasionally to be provided a window on another aspect of the world with which we fancy ourselves so familiar. And providing we (and they) don’t go about each others’ business with too much hauteur, we all stand to learn a great deal from each other.