Saturday, March 29, 2008

The Third Judgement

In May I will be having my third crack at Beer Judging. I have been confirmed as a judge at the New Zealand International Beer Awards in Nelson. I’m rather excited as not only does it give me another chance to develop my judging skills, meet and learn from brewers and judges from around the world and taste some exciting beers that are not usually available in NZ but it also takes me to Nelson where the Prince Albert is, one of 3 pubs in the country to serve real ale. It’s a hard job but someone’s got to do it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How do you go about being a beer judge then? I'm not sure it's for me but it would be interesting to read some on line guides as to what you should be able to taste in specific styles of ale.

Kieran Haslett-Moore said...

Most international comps use World Beer Cup guidelines which you can find here:

http://www.beertown.org/events/wbc/competition/reg_info/style_guide.html

American (and NZ) Homebrew comps like to use BJCP which is here:

http://www.bjcp.org/

CAMRA comps use something different however I have never been able to establish what guidelines they use.

As for how you get into it, I have for sometime attended the monthly tastings held at Regional Wines by Geoff Griggs and he asked me to judge the first time based on his knowledge of my knowledge and sensory abilities. Right place right time I guess. Once you have judged once you then have experience to justify a place on another panel.