On Beer Judging

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I had the opportunity to steward at Chicago Beer Society's 20th annual Spooky Brew beer competition this past weekend and had a great time.  There were so many good entries and I was fortunate enough to get to sample many of them.  The winner was Ray Gonzalez who made a wonderful, slightly fruity kolsch that beat out two-time Samuel Adams Longshot winner Rodney Kibzey's Blackened Hops - which scores a respectable 95th percentile on RateBeer.  

But Black IPAs aren't a style category in BJCP competitions.  They must be entered in the infamous catch-all Category 23, "Specialty Beer".  During our lunch break I got a chance to sit down with some national ranked judges and talk to them about what makes a good beer.  Their response was that, in beer judging at least,  a good beer isn't one that tastes the best, but one that meets the specific guidelines the best.  Yes, that seems obvious, but it's a shame.  So many great beers don't get the recognition they deserve because they don't fit exactly what the style guidelines say.  

I'm not saying that style guidelines are totally useless and judging should be a free-for-all.  That gets you into other troubles (Exhibit A: 11 of RateBeer's top 15 beers are barley-wines or imperial stouts).  A better approach, as is the case in most situations where there are two less than perfect choices, is compromise (Exhibit B: The Great Compromise).  Let there be room in the judging process for stylistic interpretation and innovation.  Let's say I brew a Northern German Altbier, as it stands right now I will lose points if it tastes stronger than 5.2%ABV.  But perhaps that is exactly what makes the beer work with the rest of the recipe.  It's still a Northern German Altbier, just stronger.  Of course care must be taken and anything too far out would still have to be reflected in the score, but such a rigid system is unnecessary.  In the end, great beers will win and sub-par beers will not, but when it comes down to which great beer gets to go to the best of show round, a nod to the creativity and innovative capacity of the brewer would create a much more interesting competition.

On Beer of the Month Clubs

Ah, yes.  The perfect gift for giving when you don't really know much about a person: The  of the month club.  There is perhaps nothing in the world that has such a gap between how good an idea it sounds and how good an idea it actually is.  Of the month clubs sound like a great idea.  Beer, coffee, wine, cheese, and even socks all delivered to your door.  The problem always comes in when you take a look at the price tag and work out the math.  A typical beer of the month club runs in the neighborhood of $40/month.  And for your $40, you get one 6-pack that would cost less than $10 at the liquor store.  Now, I understand there are certain costs involved in home delivery of beer.  Shipping 8lbs of beer across the country represents ~$10 of that.  Add in sourcing the different beers and other overhead costs and I could see the "of the month" club's costs approaching $30 for each delivery.  Add in some money for the club's profit and $40 seems to make sense.  But it looks a bit different when you look at the value of the services you receive.

It seems there are several factors at play when determining the value of your of the month club.  First, how much does the product itself cost to buy?  Second, how much would it actually cost you to physically obtain those carefully sourced items?  Third, how much is your time and effort to obtain the products worth (aka laziness quotient)?  Lastly, how much do you value variety and trying new/rare beers?  For those of you who may be more mathematically inclined (PC term for nerd?), here is a simple formula to determine if you should invest in a beer of the month club:

if: C_p+ C_o + V_s + V_v < P_m ; then, purchase

where:

C_p = Cost of product

C_o = Cost of obtaining

V_s = Value of sourcing

V_v = Value of variety

P_m = Price of membership

The real variables seem to be how lazy you are and how much value you put in variety.  While the cost of the product and the cost of shipping may vary to some extent based on your local market, the variance would be small compared to the cost of a membership.  For the other two variables it is easy enough to ask how much you would pay for these services.  How much would you pay for the time you spend on beer forums looking for people to trade with (V_s)?  How much of a premium would you pay at the store for a beer you had never seen there before, knowing that it was a one time order and would not be there again (V_v)?  They may make sense for some, but I suspect most of these are purchased as gifts by your rich uncle.