Introduction / What’s this all about now?

When I was studying for my BJCP tests, one thing that kept going through my head was “holy cow! There are a lot of styles!”

To make matters more complicated, each style has a list of characteristics that are expected for the style, as well as traits that are OK in this style, but which may be a flaw in another style. It’s a lot to remember, and be able to recall on the fly.

A couple of months before the tasting exam, which was in July of 2019, several of us started going out to various breweries, and filling out score sheets together. We would order tasters of one style, fill out the sheets, and then compare notes and give feedback on each other’s impressions, descriptors, and just talk about the beer in general. It was very valuable experience, and I know that whatever score I may have gotten on the tasting exam, this practice sessions can be credited for most of it.

On the day of the tasting exam, I really lucked out, because everything we were being tested on was a style that I was at least passingly familiar with, and a couple of styles that I’m very familiar with.

But what about all the other styles? Unlike the exam, when judging a flight of beer for a competition, it’s perfectly OK to go back to what the style description and refresh your memory. Although that’s great, I really wanted to be familiar with, and able to talk about, all of the styles in the BJCP style guide.

I was inspired to start off on this course of study by the excellent “BJCP Study Course” Scott Beckman outlines in the BJCP Exam Study Guide. That course consists of 10 Class sessions, which would cover the majority of the styles as well as a number of technical topics. The idea being that you organize a group of people who want to study, and one or two of them are responsible every week for picking up commercial examples of the styles covered for all to try.

I mentioned my evil plan to Jesse, and it didn’t take any convincing for him to jump right on board. I don’t know why I was surprised, since we started this blog a year ago, we’ve both really grown a lot in our beer knowledge, as well as our appreciation of some styles that we weren’t familiar with.

The Method / How much drinking are we talking about?

For the purposes of this study, we’re planning on getting at least two examples of each style, and if we’re unable to find one of the examples listed for the style in the BJCP Style Guidelines, then we’re going to find other commercial examples, preferably from Colorado, that won a medal for that style. Our first Resource for finding these local examples is probably going to be GABF Winners Website. If we can’t find any there, then we’ll branch out a bit more.

I know, I can hear you already, “but there’s over 34 Categories! That’s a lot of beer to find and buy!”

The BJCP 2015 Guidelines have 34 Categories of styles, but we’re going to be focusing on categories 1 – 27, which are considered the “classic styles”. Categories 28 – 34 are considered “Specialty beers” and include American Wild Ales, Alternative fermentable beer, wood beers, etc. They sure sound interesting, and I’m not saying we’re going to avoid those, but let’s start with a more manageable goal.

Whew, we knocked that number down a bit huh? There’s only one small problem there, we want to be a little more granular with our study session, so instead of trying several beers from the overall category, we want to shoot for trying several beers from each subcategory.

For Example, if we’re working on Strong European Beer (category 9), we’re going to try at least two Doppelbocks (9A), two Eisbocks (9B) and 2 Baltic Porters (9C).

If I do a quick count of the categories, that means we’ll be sampling 2 beers from 98 sub categories (styles). That’s at least 196 different beers. Man, I sure hope we’re thirsty. I guess it’s not a drinking problem if you call it research.

I know right now you’re thinking either; “Wow, you’re really dedicated to this and should receive global recognition in this noble pursuit”, or “What a great sacrifice you’re making in the pursuit of knowledge”, or more likely “the things some people will go through just to find an excuse to drink beer”.

Notes about Time frame and Category Selection

As for the time frame, in a perfect world we would like to shoot for sampling a subcategory every other week, but to be honest, if we end up with a 12 pack of beers to drink every other week, then we’ll probably stretch out the sampling a bit, otherwise we’ll both have a huge amount of beer just laying around.

Neither of us drink a whole lot to start with, and on top of this endeavor, we’re still going to try and drink our own homebrew, as well as keep up with our weekly brewery visits. Since we don’t have any time constraints, we’re less concerned with doing this quickly, and would rather get a thorough understanding of the style.

As for categories, we’re not going to go in any particular order. There are a couple that we’re pretty interested in brewing ourselves, or something that we’ve taken a recent liking to, so we’ll probably start there.