Following up on previous discussions about starting a (virtual) BJCP study group, I am announcing that we are moving forward with our first evening on June 17th at 8:00 pm (via Google Meet - link to follow)! Subsequent sessions will be held on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of each month (we’ll take July 1st off to celebrate Canada Day in style!).
The outline of the first two sessions will be as follows:
Session 1 - Introduction to the BJCP Guide
Introduction to the study group
Introduction to the BJCP guide and its objectives
Pathway to the various BJCP judge certifications
How to taste a beer
Tasting and commenting on a Quebec classic
Session 2 - Tasting practice
Presentation of a beer evaluation form
Round table discussion about the beers that will be presented (each participant will bring a beer they particularly like)
Each participant will taste, describe and evaluate their beer
Realizing that it is somewhat ambitious to meet every week, and in order to go through all the styles individually, we then propose to group the styles as follows:
Session 3 - World Lagers (styles 1-5)
Session 4 - Dark Lagers (styles 6-9)
Session 5 - European Ales (styles 10-13)
Session 6 - British malty beers (styles 14 to 17)
Session 7 - American interpretations (styles 18 to 22)
Session 8 - Folies belges et française (styles 23 to 26)
At each of the tasting sessions, you will be asked to bring one beer representative to one category/subcategory to the table. There will be a presentation of the particularities of each category/subcategory included in the evening, followed by a tasting of a representative beer from each category/sub-category by individual participants.
We will try to record the sessions, so you can go back at a later time and taste some (or all!) of the other beers introduced in the evening and compare your notes with the discussion we had.
Are you interested in participating in a BJCP study group?
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This event is free and will be restricted to members in good standing. To renew, or become a member, please visit the Become a club member on our website.
I’m still not going into stores unless it’s essential (wife has autoimmune issues, having everything delivered) so if it’s possible, it would be nice to know the suggested sampling beers ahead of time.
I just re-read this and it seems like for the rest of the sessions people will choose the beer they will evaluate (we won’t attempt to all bring the same one) - is that correct?
Exactly. The idea being that we would be covering as many categories as possible, without dedicating a single session to a single category. That’s why I grouped them. This way we don’t spend 30+ sessions discussing the BJCP style guide.
It is also meant to be introductory and nothing stops us from going deeper once we’ve covered the basics!
Session 2 of our study group will be this Thursday (July 17 July 15) at 20:00! Here is the outline:
We encourage everybody to make sure they have access to (at least) one beer that they will taste and describe to the group during the meeting. It can be anything you like to drink, as the objective is to go over the BJCP evalutation form (aka score sheet) and practice what we learned at the previous meeting with Andrew and Eric. An electronic, fillable, version of the BJCP Score Sheet can be downloaded here.
You can find a good refresher on how to judge beer here.
The link to the Google Meet can be found in a previous post.
