OnTap Magazine

54 | Winter 2019 | ontapmag.co.za OPINION ROB CASS eer, like anything that invokes a passionate following, is full of divisive issues. One of the most contentious must surely be the BJCP. No other topic gets beer people riled up quite as much, most often around the notion of stylistic accuracy. And to be honest, most often it is due to a misunderstanding of the BJCP by those both for and against its use. The Beer Judge Certification Program was started in the USA in 1985 to promote a standardised approach to judging homebrew competitions. The BJCP guidelines were subsequently developed specifically as a reference for judging homebrew entries. They were never intended to be used outside of the homebrewing context, and certainly not adopted to the extent they have been by brewers and consumers alike. The most recent style guidelines make it very clear that these are guidelines, not specifications. They further clarify that these guidelines do not necessarily describe every beer style and that not all commercial beer, modern or historical, will necessarily fit into the guidelines. And the BJCP recognises that beer is a developing and evolving product with styles and commercial beers changing over time, and new styles being created regularly. DESCRIPTIVE, NOT PRESCRIPTIVE It’s important to understand how the guidelines were developed. They are a collection of experiential descriptors which try to encapsulate the most prominent characteristics of a range of beers which define each given style. They are not based on the BJCP authors’ opinion on what a style should be, but rather an edited collection of a range of impressions of the classic beers which have come to define the different styles. These are either traditional or historical beers from a particular city of origin for a style (altbier for example), or more modern styles which have less geographic association and are more interpretive (American IPA). Therefore the guidelines tend to allow for a spectrum of characteristics within each style, relative to the variance in the classic examples. This also means they allow for more progressive examples which have come to be associated with a style (for example Boulevard Tank 7 as a classic saison). On this point, the BJCP guidelines make it clear to judges that they should not get too tied down in the minute details of each style when judging a particular beer. Rather, they should ask themselves whether the beer reminds them definitively of the particular style, even if some B IN DEFENCE OF THE BJCP