As I got closer to the front of the line, I felt a gravitational pull, not only to the sloshing beer in pitchers but to Sam himself, a man with a slightly off-center smile, clean-shaven face, and the kind of life-of-the-party persona that seems appropriate for someone who makes beer for a living. He’s been profiled in the New Yorker, and he starred in the Discovery Channel series Brew Masters. Tonight, he beamed as he poured beer and shook hands. If any babies were around, he’d have been kissing them. When my moment finally arrived, my glass was filled to the pour line with Dogfish’s Chicha, which tasted tangy and felt watery. Its earthy aftertaste made me want to brush my teeth.
I couldn’t resist saying hello to Sam. I’d interviewed him by phone a few years earlier for a story on how terroir—the French notion that an agricultural product, particularly wine, holds a perceptible expression of place—applies to beer. From where I stood, terroir in beer was just beginning to be acknowledged. A few brewers were growing their own hops and barley, and some were fermenting beers with fruits grown near their breweries. To my surprise, Sam, a man who brewed beers designed to capture places and moments in time, told me that, because beer is a collection of multiple ingredients that are usually sourced from a wide geography, it’s the brewers that are the common element. “For us terroir has less to do with the dirt underneath the breweries where we make our beer,” he’d said, “and more to do with the gray matter in the brewers’ heads.” If terroir is an expression of the brewer, Dogfish Head beers are a product of Sam’s terroir of self.
He remembered we’d talked about wine.
“What are you drinking?” he asked.
“The Chicha.”
“Oh, try the Black and Blue,” he said, filling my tasting glass almost to the top.
He was right. I should have been drinking the Black and Blue, a tart and rich beer that was so heavy with blackberries and raspberries, I wanted an accompanying tart crust and a dollop of whipped cream.
“Do you want us to take your picture?” said the guy who’d been waiting behind me in line.
It took me a second to realize that he wanted to take a picture of me and Sam, which felt strange. I wasn’t a run-of-the-mill fan; I was a journalist who was studying for a serious beer test. What business did I have taking a picture with Sam Calagione? I could always blame the photo on my sister-in-law, who had a fermenter-sized crush on the brewer, a holdover from his reality-show days.
“Uh, sure,” I said. Sam and I put our arms around each others’ shoulders and smiled at the back of my phone, as though we were long-lost friends.
“If you need more beer, come to the side,” he said, nodding at my glass. Just as quickly as he’d said hello, he was hugging a woman with a red bob and reminiscing about the time they did something they both found hilarious.
I walked away from the booth feeling disoriented. My glass felt sticky in my hand. I had planned to peruse the floor of GABF like a serious student, someone with a plan and a rigorous system of note taking and photo documentation. Instead I was getting drunk on whatever beer ended up in my glass and taking fan photos with Sam Calagione. I paused to send the photo to my sister-in-law, with the caption: “Just ran into your boyfriend.” A few minutes later, my phone buzzed with an “OMG!!” At least someone thought I was doing it right. I could always redeem myself tomorrow, I thought as I waited in line for a Belgian-style beer from Austin, Texas. Its geography made me pause. Sure, Belgian yeasts produce a distinct set of flavors, but if I believed a beer was the sum of its parts, including the place where it was made, a Belgian beer made in Texas would be like a Swiss watch made in New Jersey. But I let the Texas beer fill in a new area of my mind. After all, we are living in a liquid world, where Texas and Belgium can harmonize in a single brew tank.
As the night went on, I started to feel affection for the thousands of people who were getting rowdy on the festival floor. They loved beer and weren’t afraid to express their devotion to the drink. For starters, they’d each paid eighty dollars for a ticket that bought them an unlimited amount of one-ounce pours. But the beer was only part of what they’d purchased. They wanted to commune with their ilk, people who wore comfortable shoes in anticipation of a day of beer drinking and maybe even waxed their beards to resemble a hop cone. These were people who wore Mardi Gras beads in October, necklaces strung with stale pretzels, foam hats shaped like beer steins, and all manner of authentic and inauthentic lederhosen. They weren’t afraid to make out under the convention center’s florescent lights or do karaoke on a stage. They were loud, happy, and without a doubt, they farted. More obviously, they belched a lot. The more beer I drank, the more I started to hear their burps as signs of appreciation.
These beer lovers possessed an impressive ability to wait in long lines. They waited in lines to enter the convention center, to buy brewery Tshirts, and to use the bathroom. (The festival is one of those rare places where the men’s bathroom line vastly out-snakes the women’s.) They waited in lines for beer—the ones they’d tell their friends about later—and convention center hotdogs and pizza, which would never again be mentioned. As I waited in a slow-moving line for some samples of cheese, I chatted with a man who made six-pack holders that were also wooden puzzles. That’s when I realized my time in the hall had transformed me from an impartial observer of an amped up, magnified arena of beer to a member of a welcoming community. I liked meeting people while I waited in lines, where we talked about which festival beers were worth trying and which were overly hyped. As I looked down at my comfortable boots, I gave myself credit for choosing proper beer-drinking shoes. For a moment, I even had a vision of myself wearing a bier stein hat at next year’s GABF, an event I vowed not to miss.
En route to the exit minutes before the festival would close for the night, I noticed a booth with the Cicerone logo. I stopped at the booth and flipped through some sobering study booklets, one of which covered beer styles of Germany. Instantly, my bubbly feeling of inclusion evaporated. Not only did the book remind me of everything I didn’t know, which made me feel like an outsider, it also reminded me that, by committing to taking the Cicerone exam, I’d signed up to make beer less fun. Right then, it was obvious what was fun: drinking beer at the GABF with a bunch of beer-obsessed strangers. Memorizing a technical primer on beer styles I didn’t usually drink would feel more like scrubbing a bathtub or filing my taxes. The lanky gray-haired man behind the table was wearing a GABF pass that said RAY DANIELS, who is the man who created the Cicerone program.
I told Ray I was studying for the Certified Cicerone exam, and he told me about a man who, while preparing for the exam, developed severe test anxiety.
“It got so bad he had to see a therapist!” he said, laughing loudly as he tilted his head back. I mentally recorded the sound so I could replay it for hints of sinister motives while I made flashcards during the coming months.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s crazy.”
“On the day of the test, it’s pretty simple,” he said. “Either you know it or you don’t.”
“So, there’s no faking it,” I said, as I wavered between buying the German beer booklet and remaining blissfully ignorant.
“Nope.”
On Saturday morning, the last day of GABF, I prepared to reenter the convention center by tromping around downtown Denver in search of a green juice or something else that would make me feel ready to drink beer for a whole day, yet again. Along the way, I walked through air pockets of pot aromas, a pungent reminder that I was in Colorado. As I entered the windowless auditorium in the convention center, I was surrounded by throngs of bearded men wearing their best brewery-logo gear. Many of them scanned the crowd expectantly and laughed with a forced laugh, a sure sign of nerves. We were about to learn who won this year’s GABF medals.
A majority of GABF medals are awarded by beer style, in categories such as American-Style Pale Ale or Oatmeal Stout. Over the years, the gold, silver, and bronze medals have become important marketing tools that help garner
media attention and boost beer sales. Sometimes medals have helped open the checkbooks of deep-pocketed investors. In other words, medals matter. Some breweries strategize to make beers that could win. For example, a beer in the American-Style Dark Lager category will compete against fewer entries than a beer entered for American-Style Pale Ale, so entering the dark lager category creates better odds.
Charlie Papazian told me the idea of the festival as a marketing tool for brewers began in 1985, when festival attendees were asked to vote on their favorite beer from the event. “There was a lot of maneuvering by breweries to get as many votes as possible,” he said.
Two years later, the festival switched to judges handing out medals for specific styles, which was a milestone. “We created a paradigm shift in the way people thought of beer,” Charlie explained. “Before that, competitions weren’t organized by style but by alcohol content, dark or light, and draft or bottles.” Even a year earlier, the concept might have fallen flat, he said, but by 1987, craft beer consumers knew enough about beer to accept the idea of excellence within style categories.
Since then, the general idea of classifying beers within style parameters has blossomed, especially in the United States. Unlike the periodic table, which receives additions based on quantifiable scientific discoveries, the beer-style framework varies by organization, brewer, and beer drinker. While beers can be identified using science to quantify color, carbonation, bitterness, and so on, your idea of an IPA might be someone else’s American pale ale. One of the most well-known sets of style guidelines is produced by the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP), an organization that certifies beer judges for homebrew competitions. The organization was founded in 1985, and it’s produced style guidelines ever since—an accomplishment based not only in a knowledge of the technicalities of brewing but also in the ability to corral various beer professionals into consensus on thousands of debatable parameters, including the aroma, appearance, flavor, mouthfeel, ingredients, and history of more than one hundred styles. All the beers at the GABF would be judged by style according to a similar set of parameters that were created just for the GABF competition.
Ever since I’d arrived in Denver, I’d been noticing the judges who’d choose the winning beers. (They were easy to spot, because they always seemed to be wearing lanyards with nametags that announced their title.) I saw judges early in the morning, in the elevator of my hotel, and late at night, shuffling around the city. They always looked tired and slightly forlorn, like security guards at an amusement park who have to work while everyone else is having fun. For the fifteenth time, John Harris was one of the judges at GABF.
A few weeks earlier, I’d ridden my bike to Ecliptic to ask John about judging. Not only was I curious about the process as a beer drinker who was trying to come to terms with importance of the medals, I had also developed a strange new fantasy: I wanted to be a GABF judge someday, something I wasn’t ready to admit out loud. Being part of a professional beer-judging panel at this point felt highly aspirational. As we sat the bar and I drank a Belgian-style pale ale brewed with raspberries and cacao nibs, John told me the first time he’d judged the competition was in 1992, three years after he’d entered his first beer in the competition. When he talked about the seven GABF medals he’s won for beers he made at various Oregon breweries, he sounded unapologetically proud, which correlates with his experience as a judge; he knows it’s hard to win. When judges enroll, they’re asked to disclose any conflict of interest, which includes listing any beers entered into the competition that they made. Brewers never judge their own beers, but John said it wouldn’t matter if he did. He’d never recognize his own beer in the lineup. I was shocked. If he, the creator, couldn’t recognize his own beers by taste, did that make those beers run-of-the-mill? I hoped he didn’t mean what he said. Maybe he was just trying to help me understand the palate-dulling process of judging.
To apply to become a judge, you have to submit recommendations from people who are familiar with how you evaluate beer. If you qualify, you’re put on a waiting list that’s a few years long. Judges aren’t in it for the money. They’re paid in meals and lodging, and they must share a room with another judge. John usually shares a room with Garrett Oliver, the dapper brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery who’s known for wearing tailored suits and bow ties. I’d never seen John in anything other than Tshirts and shorts. But just because they are style opposites doesn’t mean they aren’t simpatico roommates. “He knows if I snore, and I know if he snores,” John told me.
Every year, judging happens according to precisely the same schedule. Judges evaluate beer during 3.5-hour sessions—two a day on the Wednesday and Thursday of GABF, and one on Friday. They eat breakfast and lunch together at a supplied buffet. “It’s all about getting your base,” John said, patting his stomach.
That base is no joke. To evaluate dozens of beers without eating could lead to drunkenness and foolish errors in judgment. The final four-hour judging session took place on Friday morning, the judges were let loose to enjoy the festival, if they had any desire to drink beer ever again.
When beers are received for judging, a team sorts and boxes the entries quickly in order to protect them from light, which can create off-flavors. (For that reason, the judging room has low light, just enough to see the color of the beer.) All beer is stored at 38 degrees until the moment of judging. It’s up to judges to warm beer that should be served at a warmer temperature by holding the cups in their hands. A team of stewards pours and presents all beers to the judges based on instructions from brewers, such as “Do not rouse this beer” or “Rouse this beer.” Stewards pour the beer samples and serve them to a table of judges on a tray in less than twelve minutes. The instant a beer leaves its bottle, its flavors and aromas begin to change.
Judges taste by style, in a sequence determined by palate fatigue. They begin with the least palate-wrecking beers—beers with lower alcohol and less bitterness—and end with heavy hitters like Russian imperial stout. Creating the schedule for the judges takes one person forty hours. As though it were 1972, judges write first-round comments and tasting notes on carbon-copy evaluation forms. Eventually one copy of each completed form is mailed to the brewer, and one is filed in GABF competition archives. Judges are identified by numbers so they remain anonymous. The judges sit at tables in groups of six or seven, and a Table Captain keeps everyone on schedule. Judges caught using smartphones during judging, even in the hallway during breaks, are asked to leave for the day. “You could be communicating with another judge across the room, or someone outside,” explained John. “You don’t want anything to compromise the integrity of the process.”
John told me the judging room is a high-pressure environment. Not only do judges need to stay extremely focused, they need to be aware of their own sensory fatigue.“Your brain gets shot,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, I taste caramel again.’”
Interacting with fellow judges can be another challenge, especially since most have divergent opinions and annoying habits, like writing slowly or breathing heavily.
But what I really wanted to know, especially when I thought about being a judge myself, was: what made a winning beer? How did John know when he’d found a winner?
“You have to have the most boringly unique beer possible,” he replied.
He explained that a medal winner usually has a middle range of attributes for its style, which helped the judges agree that the beer was brewed to style. At the same time, the beer needed to stand out. I tried to imagine what that meant for the India Pale Ale category, which had 279 entries this year. An extra dose of pine aroma? The kind of bitterly dry finish that would scrub a tired palate clean?
The preface to the BJCP guidelines notes to “allow for some flexibility in judging so that well-crafted examples can be rewarded.” Their rules are suggestions, not hard limits. The guide also mentions that not every beer in the world falls into a style category. Those are the beers that wear black leather jackets and
smoke cigarettes under the bleachers during Friday night football games, outliers that refuse to be categorized. While I enjoy encountering those rebel beers, which inspire other brewers to create their own mash-ups and contradictions, such as a “hefepils” or bitter gose (an unfiltered wheat beer made with coriander and salt), I knew that my quest to become a Certified Cicerone would require knowing, and respecting, at least one beer-style canon.
Learning so many beer styles by spring seemed daunting, so before leaving for the GABF I had decided to form a study group. I was inspired by my friend Ryan, who’d studied for the Master Sommelier test. He’d told me how in his wine study group, which met every couple of weeks, one group member presented on a single style each meeting. Then everyone tasted examples of that style together. Unfortunately, I didn’t actually know anyone who was studying for the Certified Cicerone exam, and I had a hard time imagining anyone else would take the group seriously if a test score wasn’t hanging in the balance (because that’s how I function). Then I remembered Portland beer writer Adrienne So, who’d mentioned months ago that she was considering getting her certification. At the time, she said she was interested in being my study buddy. I was a fan of her work, especially a story she wrote for Slate called “Against Hoppy Beers,” which outlined how craft brewers were alienating beer drinkers with their overzealous use of hops. The piece generated the kind of uproar you’d expect from an editorial on abortion or gun control, complete with reactionary pieces including “Lazy Beer Writers Are Ruining Craft Beer for the Rest of Us.” Obviously, she’d presented a theory that was an affront to the beer geek’s way of life. I liked that she’d stirred the pot.
My Beer Year Page 9