How to judge a SMaSH comp?

[Bauzer]

Hey guys,

So I'm running a Homebrew Club, and for the last year and a bit we've been having competitions bi-monthly on a given style. We've been judging these based on BJCP standards, with the idea that it could help us learn and edit our beers to get better and possibly enter in regional competitions and beyond.

Anyway, this year its been decided to do a SMaSH competition, and while you could still submit a beer as a BJCP category, there are a few that may not fall in to any category at all. Since SMaSH's are a bit 'experimental' and learning about the balance of Malt and Hops, I'm struggling a bit on how to best proceed with judging this comp.

I've had some input which has been good, and I'm leaning on us ignoring BJCP, and focusing on the hop, and its characteristics. But as for judging categories.. I'm just not sure on how to proceed.

Has anyone put on a competition and judged SMaSH's? What did you do? How did it go? Would you change anything?

Worst comes to worse, I have a gift of a 'beer tasting kit' thing I got as a gift once. It rates things like 'sight', 'sip', 'taste', and I think something else.

I want to be able to help give the judges some sort of guidelines to work with, other than taste the beer. Rate out of 10..

 

[Yooper]

If they fit into categories, like pale ale, IPA, American lager, pilsner, etc, than they can be judged that way. They all should really fit in some sort of category- maris otter and EKG? An English- ordinary bitter/ ESB/fill in the blank.

You can change based on taste instead, of course, but for judging organizing by category is probably easiest.

Even SMaSH beers generally would fit into some sort of category- American ale, International pale lagers, German ale, Berliner Weiss, etc.

 

[Bauzer]

An answer that I've come across a few times. I've also heard of a few comp's that say its too difficult to judge based on a style, since this is more experimental.

It is true, that lots may be lagers, or more likely Pale Ales or IPA's, which is fine, since many of these are pretty dynamic with taste profiles.

Where I'm running in to issues, is the one I made.. I had used Red X, and Kazbeck hops, with House Imperial Yeast.. right now its tasting like an iced tea. Spicy, slightly earthy, with noticeable lemon peel flavor. (13 SRM, 51.8 IBU's), I'm not entirely sure where this would fit in to anything, in that if I classified it as close to a style as I could, I worry that it would lack a lot of other things required by a style. I've plugged it in to a few styles already, but there always seems to be something that would not meet criteria.

Like American IPA - Its not an American hop, its a Czech hop, so it would disqualify it
American Pale Ale - too dark
Amber Ale - zero caramel/crystal favors
Amber Kellerbeir - not a lager

I'm still cycling through BS3 on styles to see if I can find something that would work, but where you'd supplement a style you'd think this would fit in to, it just doesn't .... quite work.

I just wanted to use things I've never touched before. That is kind of the point of a SMaSH in my opinion. Learn about hops and malt. Now I've put myself in a corner. LOL!

 

[Bauzer]

So.. in the end, I continued through the styles and landed on Best Bitter as the closest to what I think it could be. So I supposed in a pinch, we could continue to do BJCP.

I had thought someone perhaps has done a SMaSH comp, and used another method for judging.

Still open to input!

 

[dkennedy]

Not sure which style that would fit, I'd put it in my fridge though... Sounds great for summer!

 

[Punx Clever]

An answer that I've come across a few times. I've also heard of a few comp's that say its too difficult to judge based on a style, since this is more experimental.

It is true, that lots may be lagers, or more likely Pale Ales or IPA's, which is fine, since many of these are pretty dynamic with taste profiles.

Where I'm running in to issues, is the one I made.. I had used Red X, and Kazbeck hops, with House Imperial Yeast.. right now its tasting like an iced tea. Spicy, slightly earthy, with noticeable lemon peel flavor. (13 SRM, 51.8 IBU's), I'm not entirely sure where this would fit in to anything, in that if I classified it as close to a style as I could, I worry that it would lack a lot of other things required by a style. I've plugged it in to a few styles already, but there always seems to be something that would not meet criteria.

Like American IPA - Its not an American hop, its a Czech hop, so it would disqualify it
American Pale Ale - too dark
Amber Ale - zero caramel/crystal favors
Amber Kellerbeir - not a lager

I'm still cycling through BS3 on styles to see if I can find something that would work, but where you'd supplement a style you'd think this would fit in to, it just doesn't .... quite work.

I just wanted to use things I've never touched before. That is kind of the point of a SMaSH in my opinion. Learn about hops and malt. Now I've put myself in a corner. LOL!

Sounds like a hoppy saison.