Webinars

What You Will Learn:

Learn techniques to judge a beer style for which you only have theoretical knowledge and need to trust your sensory skills.

During this webinar, you’ll learn more about how to quickly understand what differentiates a beer style through:

• What’s important to understand from style history
• Factors about the style characteristics and ranges
• Actual tasting notes using some slider type score sheets.
• How to describe the similarities and differences to Similar Styles

Commercial Calibration (Compare and Contrast):

Best Bitter, British Golden Ale and Australian Sparkling Ale

About Peter Symons:

Peter Symons is a Sydney [Australia] homebrewer with an ongoing passion, perhaps bordering on obsession, with discovering and recreating old beers. He has been brewing for over 20 years, and brews on either a self-made HERMS 3V or RIMS 1V system, experimenting with both process and ingredients to recreate old beers.

Peter has a Graduate Certificate in Brewing from Ballarat University, completed the Siebel Institute’s WBA Concise Course, and has judged at many competitions as a BJCP Recognised Judge.

He is also a member of the Extra Special Brewers club, who fearlessly evaluate beer every month.

After 6 years of research, in January 2016, he self-published Bronzed Brews – Home Brewing Old Australian Beers and after a further 2 years of research, including being given rare access to the Coopers company archives in Adelaide, published the sequel; 6 O’CLOCK Brews – Home Brewing More Old Australian Beers, which includes many recreations of Coopers beers including Sparkling Ale. http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/prsymons

You can watch Peter’s 2017 AHA Presentation below. This is a special Loom link which allows for comments and doesn’t require an AHA membership to view. Please support the AHA with your membership which provides access to all the videos from past HomebrewCons.

The purpose of this webinar is to help prepare prospective or new judges for the entrance exam and the judging exam. In the first half of the webinar, I will provide some insight into strategies to maximize your chances of passing the BJCP Online Entrance Exam. We will talk about time management, preparation, and how to take the exam. In the second half, we will also talk about how to fill out the BJCP scoresheet fully to boost your chances at not only nailing a passing score, but also possibly elevate your skills to the next level if you are re-taking the exam. Filling out a scoresheet properly and fully not only helps you on your judging exam, but it’s also a skill you can take with you to the table.

Link to Jason’s 2015 Video on Loom  (please add your comments)

About Jason Johnson:

I started brewing in 2000 when I was given a basic homebrewing kit for Christmas. Like most people at the time, I started with extract. Even when it comes to cooking, I rarely follow a recipe to the letter and always end up tweaking them, so it wasn’t long before I was creating my own recipes. One of those recipes was Vader’s Fist.  A chocolate stout with cacao nibs, which back in 2002 was not all that common. Anyway, I thought the beer was so good I would enter it into a homebrew competition, which was the Schooner Homebrew competition, and see how landed. That beer ended up taking a silver medal, which to me for my first competition sparked an interest. How was my beer judged? How does one become qualified to judge beer? So, I reached out to the homebrew club that sponsored the competition and they pointed me to the nearest club that was hosting BJCP prep classes (The Green Bay Rackers). I signed up right away for the course and drove back and forth never missing a class. I was hooked. I registered as soon as possible to take my exam and passed at the Certified level. Since that time I have re-tested and currently hold the rank of National with the BJCP. I may have nailed the judging exam but I still struggle with the written exam. Admittedly, the essay format is not for everyone. 

I have this strong urge to help educate and help people get started in either homebrewing or judging. Up until recently, I have been very active in my local homebrewing community. I was a member of the Manty Malters Homebrew club since it’s rebirth in the early 2000s. During my time there, I held the positions of President, Media Manager, and the “BJCP education guy”. Back when blogs were the rage, I had my Barleypopmaker’s beer blog, which is still kind of up but I am not an active blogger anymore. I also recorded a Free BJCP prep course that I uploaded to YouTube. The reason I created and uploaded that, was at the time there really were no free video presentations on YouTube and I wanted to try to give people who maybe didn’t have a close-by homebrew club, a basic resource to at least get familiar with the BJCP and judging process. I did receive some emails that people have taken my online course and then took and passed in the exam. I think the most mail I got about that came from Europe. Not everyone has a homebrew club close enough that they can attend regular classes, but they may be able to watch those videos, drive to take an exam, and drive to the occasional competition. I also co-hosted the Brewnology podcast, which was similar in nature. We tried to cover everything we could think of in terms of beer judging and evaluation and the show ran its course at about the 50 episode mark. I also worked at the local Homebrew shop (Grape Grain and Bean) for a few years on weekends and I hosted both their basic and advanced homebrewing classes. I still write beer reviews for Beer Connoisseur magazine and I also have written a piece for Beer Connoisseur on cellaring beer. Today, I don’t have quite as much time for all the extra stuff as I would like, as family and career paths tend to change. I have left the Manty Malters homebrew club and quit my weekend gig at Grape Grain and Bean, mostly because the schedules no longer mesh with my family and career life. I am still brewing and recently upgraded all my equipment from the standard mash-tun/boil kettle setup to the all-in-one, Robobrew. I also am set up to do both small batches and standard 5-gallon batches, as I obviously am not sharing as much beer as I was. I still judge on the weekends that mesh with my family schedule and I still like to help share the interest and love of beer and judging when I can.

Bob Hall – Sensory Evaluation of Oxidized Beers

What You’ll Learn:
This webinar will cover the chemistry and sensory evaluation of beer oxidation.  Too often oxidation is considered as the canonical “papery” aroma, where in fact oxidation can be manifested in many forms.  The goal of this webinar will be to understand the forms of oxidation and the many ways that judges can detect and describe oxidation aromas in beer.

Commercial Calibration:

Sierra Nevada Torpedo (fresh and oxidized): At the beginning of the webinar, we will do a commercial calibration on a both a fresh Sierra Nevada Torpedo and an oxidized one. 

Oxidizing your Sierra Nevada Torpedo Beer:
Here’s how I suggest you oxidize: Take a bottle of Torpedo and remove the cap. Gently blow out the headspace. Recap it with a fresh cap. Invert bottle a few times to mix in the O2. Put it somewhere warm (but dark)–your car perhaps. Hold for a few days and then cool to be ready to drink by Monday evening. Keep an unmanipulated bottle around to compare with the oxidized one. If you have some very fresh IPA (homebrew, a growler from a favorite local brewery), that will be fun to compare also.

About Bob Hall:

Bob Hall is a homebrewer of 29 years and is a BJCP Grand Master 2 judge.  He brews many styles and is currently infatuated with lagers.  He serves on the board of directors of the Ronan Cooperative Brewery, which will be the first of its kind in Montana.  By day he is a professor of freshwater ecology at University of Montana stationed at Flathead Lake.

Erik will discuss how to refine our ability to accurately describe beer characteristics, especially those derived from fermentation.  This presentation includes some content from his paid course Building a Descriptive Vocabulary (no scheduled classes).

Content will include:

• Commercial Calibration: Sierra Nevada Summerfest
• Fermentation attributes 
  • Myths and Reality When Judging
  • Clarity, is it yeast derived
  • Flocculation
  • Non-yeast sources of turbidity
• Attenuation, yeast and the mash
• Flavors and Aromas
  • Positive flavors (esters, phenols)
  • Off-flavors (emphasis on diacetyl)
• Question and Answer

About Erik:

Erik has been with White Labs since 2014. Before coming to White Labs, he worked for: a prominent regional brewery, a nano-brewery, and several beer and wine focused retail outlets.  He has led staff and customer education classes on beverage service, history, and pairing. Erik holds his Cicerone® certification as well as a certificate in the Business of Craft Beer from San Diego State University. His objective is to use his knowledge and experience to make fermentation and service education informative, accessible, and interesting to professionals and hobbyists alike.

Ron Pattinson:

The Rise and Fall of English Porter 1750-1950

Ron will discuss the meteoric rise and sad death of porter in England. He’ll also describe the brewing of porter and how it evolved through world wars and temperance movements.

This is a rare opportunity to hear from one of the world’s most prominent beer historians. 

About Ron: 

Ron is a brewing historian who writes online at Shut Up About Barclay Perkins. Ron lives in Amsterdam but is obsessed with the British brewery Barclay Perkins (therefore the title of his blog). He has spent the last 15 years researching and obsessing over many beer-related topics. His European Beer Guide has pointed countless beer lovers in the direction of good beer across Europe, while on his Shut up About Barclay Perkins blog, he writes about beer history, mostly the history of British beer styles, but with excursions into German, Austrian, Dutch and Scandinavian beer history. 

He is the author of many books about beer history, most significant for their single-word titles, such as “Porter!”, “Mild!” and “Bitter!”. Each month he writes a column for BeerAdvocate magazine about beer history. He recently published a book on brewing historic beers called “The Home Brewer’s Guide to Vintage Beer”. He is married and the father of two teenage sons.

Ron’s Books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Ronald-Pattinson/e/B00J236GWC