Beer Judge Certification Program Class Information Page

In an effort to promote beer literacy, the appreciation of real beer and to improve the beer tasting and evaluation skills of our members, the Bay Area Mashtronauts are establishing this ongoing library of documents to be available to all the members of the Bay Area Mashtronauts but most especially the members of BAM that are studying to become Certified as BJCP Judge.

This page has links to the BJCP Exam Center and to many of the educational links on that page.  These are valuable tools and resources any prospective Judge needs to be aware of and use in the process of becoming a BJCP Certified Beer Judge.

The Current or most recent BAM BJCP Course Syllabus is listed here:

BAM BJCP Course Syllabus 2009 

Study Documents:

The very first document is the current BJCP Exam Study Guide.  This is the current definitive document.  Tor questions about the BJCP Class and Exam.  Note this is listed as an "Interim" Study Guide.  It is a dynamic document and it will be continuously updated by the BJCP organizaiton.  We will always point to the most current version in this library.  We may have the obsoleted previous versions of this document in the library archives.

To supplement the Study Guide we also use the Foam Ranger BJCP Study Guide written by Mike Heniff (BJCP Master Judge) in 2005.  Although this document pre-dates the current Study Guide, its wealth of information about the biochemistry of, procedures for proper and help in trouble shooting brewing beer make it a valuable adjunct to the Study Guide,

Section D of the BJCP Exam Study Guide, The BJCP Exam and Typical Questions, is a detailed discussion of the essay portion of the current BJCP exam.  It starts with an overview of the entire exam,  The remaining sections are explanations of the various sections of the exam.  Each section addresses a particular portion of the exam.  This is a very valuable tool and should be used to familarize the prospective BJCP judge with what is to be expected in this part of the BJCP exam.

The presentation by Gordon Strong, Mastering the BJCP Exam, is an excellent overview of what is needed to pass the BJCP exam.  Although originally presented in 2003, the presentation was updated in 2008. 

A handy study tool developed by Sean Hewitt is the set of Off Flavor Flashcards.  This is not officially approved BJCP material.  These cover the most common off flavors and defects.  They also include how to recognize them and what to do about them. This is a .pdf file that can be downloaded and assembled into flashcards for study.

An excellent aid to the BJCP exam is this set of Completed Scoresheets.  These are very valuable as examles of what is expected to be found on the scoresheets used in the tasting portion of the BJCP exam.  These are actual exam scoresheets filled out by people who did very well on this exam. 

A helpful presentation for the BJCP student and prospective judge is the Judge Procedures Manual. The data in this manual is based on years of experience with homebrew competition. This document is useful for both the preparation of the student and the preparation of a judge for a competition.

As always, the current BJCP Style Guidelines, is the definitive guidelines of what the specifics of each style and sub-style of beer (also mead and cider) recognised by the BJCP. This link allows you access to several different versions of this guideline to suit your needs.

Auxillary Study Documents

The 2008 Style Chart is an Excel spreadsheet that contains just the vital statistics for each Style and Sub-Style of beer, mead and cider listed in the current BJCP  Style Guidlines.  It is a very quick tool for looking up just the values of O.G., F.G., %ABV, IBUs & Color SRM. the link to this spreadsheet is on the BJCP  Style Guidelines page.  We have already down loaded it to our BJCP  folder. 

We have also included a list of spreadsheet listing commercial examples of Classic Styles of beers.

A very helpful and handy tool is the Flavorwheel.  It is a .gif file.  It associates in  a simple visual manner flavors and aromas most frequently found when tasting beer.

Although slightly out of date, the .pdf file, 2004 BJCP Flashcards, is still an excellent aid in quickly learning the details of each style and sub-style of beer listed in the BJCP Style Guideline of 2004. While there are differences with the current 2008 BJCP Style Guideline, they tend to be minor.  If you wish to detail the changes between the 2004 Style Guidelines and the 2008 Style Guidelines, this one page .pdf document lists them:  Summary of Changes. 

One more document, the BAM Class Reference List.  It is first a reference to other books and documents for each class in the BAM BJCP course.  It is also a compilaton of other sources of study material.  Some of it is old but it can be a

This library will continue to be updated and grow.