Perhaps you'd like Kolsch to be served in a tall, straight-sided glass, Belgian strong ales in an open Chalice, English Ordinary Bitter in a pint glass, meads in a tulip? Etc....etc...etc....yawn!
I was more having a slight laugh (hopefully with you, seemingly not) about the divergent specifics that different groups might put to into a comp...
...but, seeing as we went there, one man’s goose or baby shit could be another’s horse shit...
No, I don’t think anyone has suggested specific glassware, but I do firmly believe that plastic taints the judging process. Flavour and aroma is unlikely but visual impact on clarity and colour appropriateness is not unusual. Can be avoided. Often it is not.
Jugs confused me the first time I was involved a Vicbrew comp. well before I “had a badge”. They are far more susceptible to sloppy stewarding - when we go from bottle to glass it’s obvious if a steward got a bit excited at the end of a bottle conditioned beer - in a jug we have to engage at best, assume at worst who’s fault those floaties are.
The double pour action from bottle to jug and jug to glass IS having a tangible effect on aroma and carbonation. Arguable that the final flight order may be the same - though it’s quite possible that some pleasant hop or ester compounds may be more volatile than others and therefore a more sensitive beer may not have had its chance to shine in a double pour - but even if we assume the same flight order because the jug curtailed aroma evenly, were curtailing scores as a result. That aroma focussed beer might miss out on BOS due to it “not quite getting there” against a really clean neutral beer, or a malt focussed beer.
The other item that I’ve observed out of the very efficient Vicbrew crew that shows there’s always room for improvement was the (as I recall) rather out of the blue banning of champagne bottles. I completely understand the logic, but given the correlation with “special” beers that may often be aged, it’s not fair to spring that on a cohort in season. Like 330ml bottles have been, it should be phased out over time with plenty of notice.
So on that note...Will nats in Melbourne next year be accepting champagne bottles from other states next year? If not, you’d better shout that from the roof tops (and put it visibly on the AABC website) right now. Before comp season 2018 starts.
So finally the website, Vicbrew “own” the AABC website right? Running a comp is more than just what happens on the day. There have been multiple offers of skill from other groups to help with modernising the website, working with developers to get the AABC style guidelines available in app on phone. Initially these were ignored. Then (maybe two years later?) they were accepted with no follow through. For my part, those offers are now expired through changing life and exhaustion of head/brick wall blends.
At this point in time, the style guideline links still point to someone’s C drive, as they have all year.
VicBrew runs a tight comp, but like you say, this is an amateur comp. Done by volunteers in their spare time. That’s my whole point.
There’s always room for improvement and sometimes that’s out of reasonable reach. There is an argument that vic’s lead and experience would place them well to “just own it”. But as MHB says there’s arguments against too.
A new reason, just exposed today is that if you guys come in with a belligerent “we know what we’re doing coz we’re pros, cram your suggestions you don’t know which way is up”
you will alienate all other states. If it did happen, we would expect that pro claim to flow through to all aspects of the comp. That doesn’t exist now. You won’t get national buy in with this attitude.
I’m looking forward to the comp in Melbourne next year. You guys know how to make it roll on the day, and that’s in a large way down to your chief stewarding, Martin.
I’m also Looking forward to reps from other states coming down and seeing what they can take home for when they might run nats in 2019.
