Click WINNERS for the list!
Comes out Sat. the 21st at the awards dinner. Hopefully we have 3 persons who placed!
Mike Y. & Lyn, Brad W. & Dustin and Hal W.
2008 AAH National winners!
Moderator: Post Moderators
2008 AAH National winners!
Cheers,
Lyn
Everybody has the right to be stupid. Some people abuse the privilege.
I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.
What I don't Know Far out weighs what I do.
Lyn
Everybody has the right to be stupid. Some people abuse the privilege.
I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.
What I don't Know Far out weighs what I do.
Well, just viewed the list of 2008 winners and we did not place 
There are some notable names that won though:
Julian Shragel of Long Beach got a silver for Belgian Specialty
Bob Thompson of TVHA got bronze for Belgian dubbel
Missing were Virg Regman and Jamil Z. this year and notables were Gordon Strong, David Houseman Kristin England and Steve Piatz of BJCP fame so we've got to step our game up!
There are some notable names that won though:
Julian Shragel of Long Beach got a silver for Belgian Specialty
Bob Thompson of TVHA got bronze for Belgian dubbel
Missing were Virg Regman and Jamil Z. this year and notables were Gordon Strong, David Houseman Kristin England and Steve Piatz of BJCP fame so we've got to step our game up!
Cheers,
Lyn
Everybody has the right to be stupid. Some people abuse the privilege.
I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.
What I don't Know Far out weighs what I do.
Lyn
Everybody has the right to be stupid. Some people abuse the privilege.
I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.
What I don't Know Far out weighs what I do.
Thanks Pete, I did as I said a quick scan, so I missed them. I'm so used to seeing their names in almost "every" category and damn, when is the AHA coming back to the west coast? There does appear to be some damn severe "bias" since quaff usually has 15-20 winning entries so either they've stopped brewing and entering or somethin's fishey goin' on..., but I'm not going to throw stones or make insinuations, but WTF? Quaff & DOZE with only a couple of places is really off the wall. As Oskaar stated, "regional bias" is why beer judging is subjective, not objective. Just make sure if you're entering a beer, it meets every point of the style it's entered in.. I judged beers that are supposed to have hops and malt and 95% did not, so it's harder the bigger the competition to make it.
Oh well, once the score sheet's are back, please scan and post them. I'm curious about the comments and who the judges were and where they're from...
Oh well, maybe the room was overly hot like today in Corona, the threat of the Mississippi overflowing, the start of summer, bad shipping, but I'm over it (except for the overly hot judging venue today: Good thing Oskaar, you had to go to work, I think you'd have melted by the end of your 4th or 5th sample. God, it was a brutal 110 f, outside and just a little better inside at 85-88 f. I actually moved to the middle of the restuarant and it was 10-15 degrees cooler for my 2nd flight)
Great job for making it anyway! Maybe next year we'll do better!
Oh well, once the score sheet's are back, please scan and post them. I'm curious about the comments and who the judges were and where they're from...
Oh well, maybe the room was overly hot like today in Corona, the threat of the Mississippi overflowing, the start of summer, bad shipping, but I'm over it (except for the overly hot judging venue today: Good thing Oskaar, you had to go to work, I think you'd have melted by the end of your 4th or 5th sample. God, it was a brutal 110 f, outside and just a little better inside at 85-88 f. I actually moved to the middle of the restuarant and it was 10-15 degrees cooler for my 2nd flight)
Great job for making it anyway! Maybe next year we'll do better!
Cheers,
Lyn
Everybody has the right to be stupid. Some people abuse the privilege.
I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.
What I don't Know Far out weighs what I do.
Lyn
Everybody has the right to be stupid. Some people abuse the privilege.
I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.
What I don't Know Far out weighs what I do.
Yeah, judging in an environment where the temperature is over 80 presents problems of it's own. You not only get a lot of oil on your skin from the temperature and that oil picks up the odors from the micro-impurities in the air, in this case pizza, marinara sauce, hops, alcohol, etc. It also causes volitilaztion of the beer your sampling since the temperature of the beer will be rising more rapidly to meet the ambient temperature, and this will flush off a goodly portion of the hop and malt aroma in the first several minutes after the bottle is opened and the beer is poured.
You can test this by taking a couple of bottled of beer and opening one in an uncooled area, and pouring off a sample, letting both stand in the uncontrolled temperature. Do the same but inside your house where the temperature is cooler. Let both stand for about 20 minutes and sample them. You'll see what I mean.
Cheers,
Oskaar
You can test this by taking a couple of bottled of beer and opening one in an uncooled area, and pouring off a sample, letting both stand in the uncontrolled temperature. Do the same but inside your house where the temperature is cooler. Let both stand for about 20 minutes and sample them. You'll see what I mean.
Cheers,
Oskaar
Don't go into the Pimped-Out-Refrigerator Jack!
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that around 1 at Lampost Pizza they started making f'in POPCORN with BUTTER. Damn you could cut the air with a butter knife it smelled so bad of diacetyl for a couple of hours.
Cheers,
Lyn
Everybody has the right to be stupid. Some people abuse the privilege.
I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.
What I don't Know Far out weighs what I do.
Lyn
Everybody has the right to be stupid. Some people abuse the privilege.
I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.
What I don't Know Far out weighs what I do.
LOL, what can I say?
I learned about this kind of stuff early on in wine appreciation and tasting classes. There are some great resources out there for tasting and sensory analysis. For example there is a course next weekend at UC Davis on Basic Sensory Analysis for wine tasting and it covers all of the aromas you folks may have run across in the beer fault aromas and flavors night, plus about a hundred more.
Seems like everyone will poo poo a wine tasting reference or wine sensory analysis write up as being snobish or too high-falootin to be realistic for beer tasting and sensory analysis. My contention is that the two are complimentary, and necessary for those that want to be good, rather than just average judges. One may clock a lot of beer judging points at BJCP competitions, but it's really necessary in my opinion to learn HOW to taste and detect flavors in order to be effective. I don't see a lot of sensory classes in the beer world teaching people how to effectively get the flavors, aromas and characters into their mouths and noses in order to really identify everything possible when tasting. It's the mechanics of sipping a small amout of beer/wine/mead (about 25 ml) into your mouth, and then working it around effectively to ID the flavors, characters and aromas in what you're tasting.
I also see people smoking, wearing strong after shave, drinking coffee, eating spicy breakfasts, etc. prior to judging. At the mead festival we put those people on with senior mead judges since their palates are blown out well before they even sit down to judge. Any serious wine tasting or sensory panels will always inform their judges to not wear cologne, smoke, etc if they are going to participate. This is because the residual aroma that is attached to that person spreads throughout the tasting area and compromises peoples ability to taste and smell faults.
To me it's common sense that I don't want to do anything to compromise my sense of smell and taste, or anyone else's in the process. It's been my experience that the people who are really serious about sensory analysis are very aware of this and really make an effort to put themselves in the best position possible to deliver accurate and reliable feedback. I'm really careful about this when I'm judging, and the people that I admire as judges and tasters do the same.
Take a look at The Taste of Wine by Emille Peynaud. This is the definitive work on tasting and sensory analysis, and goes into the mechanics of tasting and gustatory senses.
Anyhow, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Cheers,
Oskaar
I learned about this kind of stuff early on in wine appreciation and tasting classes. There are some great resources out there for tasting and sensory analysis. For example there is a course next weekend at UC Davis on Basic Sensory Analysis for wine tasting and it covers all of the aromas you folks may have run across in the beer fault aromas and flavors night, plus about a hundred more.
Seems like everyone will poo poo a wine tasting reference or wine sensory analysis write up as being snobish or too high-falootin to be realistic for beer tasting and sensory analysis. My contention is that the two are complimentary, and necessary for those that want to be good, rather than just average judges. One may clock a lot of beer judging points at BJCP competitions, but it's really necessary in my opinion to learn HOW to taste and detect flavors in order to be effective. I don't see a lot of sensory classes in the beer world teaching people how to effectively get the flavors, aromas and characters into their mouths and noses in order to really identify everything possible when tasting. It's the mechanics of sipping a small amout of beer/wine/mead (about 25 ml) into your mouth, and then working it around effectively to ID the flavors, characters and aromas in what you're tasting.
I also see people smoking, wearing strong after shave, drinking coffee, eating spicy breakfasts, etc. prior to judging. At the mead festival we put those people on with senior mead judges since their palates are blown out well before they even sit down to judge. Any serious wine tasting or sensory panels will always inform their judges to not wear cologne, smoke, etc if they are going to participate. This is because the residual aroma that is attached to that person spreads throughout the tasting area and compromises peoples ability to taste and smell faults.
To me it's common sense that I don't want to do anything to compromise my sense of smell and taste, or anyone else's in the process. It's been my experience that the people who are really serious about sensory analysis are very aware of this and really make an effort to put themselves in the best position possible to deliver accurate and reliable feedback. I'm really careful about this when I'm judging, and the people that I admire as judges and tasters do the same.
Take a look at The Taste of Wine by Emille Peynaud. This is the definitive work on tasting and sensory analysis, and goes into the mechanics of tasting and gustatory senses.
Anyhow, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Cheers,
Oskaar
Don't go into the Pimped-Out-Refrigerator Jack!
Well, I was a bit disappointed that the milk stout didn't place, but given that I've only been brewing 2 1/2 years, I can't say I'm surprised. Especially since Joe Formanek, who medaled in two other categories this year and who has placed in the NHC in other years, took the silver in the category.
But hell, regional bias is a much better explanation for my ego, so we'll go with that
But hell, regional bias is a much better explanation for my ego, so we'll go with that
Brad
Well, I just rec. the 2nd round sheets, and there were more than 5,600 entries worldwide and only 759 were judged in the 2nd round. They used the new "checklist" format (which I like) and 2 of the judges said they'd drink a pint of the beer.
For judges, we had 1 recognized, 1 certified and 1 national (a famous batch sparger) who gave a consensus score of 36.3 and was judged # 4 of 9 and went to the tables mini-bos! I won't name name's here on an open forum, but if anyone wants, I'll let you know via an email or pm.
Nothing was dinged but it just was not that "magical" beer that wowed them vivaciously so good to know it fared pretty well throught it's competiton session!
For judges, we had 1 recognized, 1 certified and 1 national (a famous batch sparger) who gave a consensus score of 36.3 and was judged # 4 of 9 and went to the tables mini-bos! I won't name name's here on an open forum, but if anyone wants, I'll let you know via an email or pm.
Nothing was dinged but it just was not that "magical" beer that wowed them vivaciously so good to know it fared pretty well throught it's competiton session!
Cheers,
Lyn
Everybody has the right to be stupid. Some people abuse the privilege.
I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.
What I don't Know Far out weighs what I do.
Lyn
Everybody has the right to be stupid. Some people abuse the privilege.
I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.
What I don't Know Far out weighs what I do.
I received my score sheets as well. Average score of 31, with a 29, 30, and 34 as the individual scores.
I'm a bit concerned with some of the scoring, and I'm thinking that there might be some inconsistency in the bottles that Dustin and I are making. I see such a wide range of scores and comments that I can't think are based on the beer itself; I think maybe some of our bottles are better than others...
Something we need to really evaluate a bit closer...
I'm a bit concerned with some of the scoring, and I'm thinking that there might be some inconsistency in the bottles that Dustin and I are making. I see such a wide range of scores and comments that I can't think are based on the beer itself; I think maybe some of our bottles are better than others...
Something we need to really evaluate a bit closer...
Brad