But What a Wonderful Waste

The shirt says it all.



I commented to a fellow homebrewer years ago, 'This hobby would take all the time, energy and money I'd ever want to throw at it.'



He laughed and said, 'Oh no. It'd take way more than that.'



True that. Of course, these days I waste much, much less of my life on homebrewing. Three or four batches a year if I'm lucky, and I only judge once a year now that AHA first rounds aren't hosted by my club, the Kansas City BierMeisters.



When I tell people, 'I'm judging beer this weekend,' I think most believe I'm using a euphemism for a drinking binge. I wouldn't do that. If that was what I meant, I'd just pull a Willie Nelson and say, 'I'm gonna go get drunk.'

And what do they think when I elaborate that I'm a National-rank beer judge? Probably nothing more than that denial is the first sign.



As with barbecue competitions, judging beer is not about what I like or dislike. As a judge, your job is to know the target a particular beer style is defined as, and evaluate the samples with regard to how close the brewer got to the target. If you're any good at it, you can give a very high score to a beer you would not drink if the bartender gave it to you free, and you can also give a very low score to a beer you'd personally like a six-pack of that is not to style.



So what sort of dork makes so much work out of drinking beer? Well, my kind of dork. And actually, I should also add that judging beer does not mean drinking beer. While we don't aspirate our samples as wine judges do (disgusting custom necessitated by excessively long flights—wine judges often evaluate over 100 wines in a day, so if they swallowed they'd end up shit-faced), we take baby sips and the vast majority of the beer evaluated gets dumped in pitchers for disposal.



In fact, few things whet your appetite to drink beer like judging beer. Judge two flights on a Saturday and you might consume almost twelve ounces of brew in a six or seven hour span. It's like a strip-tease for your beer drinking inner child. Granted, the stripper is sometimes an obese yet flat-chested matron with open running sores, but that doesn't necessarily counteract desire.



Holyfield was the host once again. Great venue, because they have a room that is fit for tasting. Breweries are sometimes the host facility for these things and you wouldn't think so but a brewery sucks for judging beer in. They tend to be cold, drafty places overwhelmed with the smell of solvents, cleaning and sanitizing supplies. Holyfield's room is the sort of place people book for wedding receptions, lots of hardwood and windows.



The winery has the most amazing dogs. Amazing if you are amazed by giant animals who either beg and drool or ignore you and drool. I gather there are pests who eat grapes that fear such dogs.



I was happy to get to judge Best of Show again. Both because it means BJCP points and because it's just plain fun. And to get to judge it not only with Alberta Rager who has forgotten more about beer than I'm likely ever to learn, but also with Al Boyce, a Grand Master and primordial beer geek, was a real honor.



BOS judging got down to three beers, a dry stout, an English barleywine and a Flanders red. All of which were beers that could take Best of Show at any competition I've been involved in, including ones with almost twice as many overall entries.



The stout won despite my campaign for the barleywine. It was 3:1 in the end, and I was the outvoted one. So it goes, I doubt anyone is going to get a 50 (read perfect, hole-in-one) scoresheet from their flight and freak out that they were an also-ran in the BOS round. They just happened to come up against the one golfer who also got a hole-in-one that day...



There was the banquet then, which I begged off of. Combination of poverty from having my hours cut and overeating at the breakfast and lunch provided the judges. I think I could have skipped lunch and still been full when the banquet was lined up. Oklahoma Joe's, so good stuff no doubt.






The awards ceremony, though, was satisfying to see. Especially to get to see who it was who made particularly impressive examples of this style or that.



There were TV guys on hand, too, doing a pilot for a brew-oriented TV show. The on-camera guy from that set even won a medal for one of his entries.

And no, I don't mean Andy (pictured here).