14 replies to this topic

[Sidney Porter]

I retook the tasting portion on May 9th. Received an email yester day that I scored high enough to move me up to National. The actual results are in the mail, but getting the email confirm was nice. I think that I am done with National, I don't see taking the time to memorize everything you need write for Master.

[Thirsty]

I retook the tasting portion on May 9th. Received an email yester day that I scored high enough to move me up to National. The actual results are in the mail, but getting the email confirm was nice. I think that I am done with National, I don't see taking the time to memorize everything you need write for Master.

Congrats! That is a big jump! There is a pretty big gap to jump to master, how did you score on the essay part the first time? Will you have to take everything again to get the 90? That should give me somewhat of a time table for my results- I will expect them sometime may/june.

[MtnBrewer]

Congrats, SP! National is pretty badass imo. That's the highest rank I could ever see myself attaining too. Well done.

[Sidney Porter]

when I originally took the exam in 2007 I scored a 78 on the written and a 67 on the tasting for a 75%. Scored an 84% on the tasting this time which actually averages out to a 79.8, but the email said National... so I guess they round up.The first time I probably did each of the tastings in 5 minutes to have more time for the written portion. By only taking the tasting I probably spent 15 minutes on each of the tasting.

[ChicagoWaterGuy]

I got my score a few weeks back. Faster than I thought it would be. I scored 80 on the written and 70 on the tasting for a 77 total. When I get enough points to move to the next level, I'll take the tasting again. It was a great experience.

[Marmot]

What is everyone using for study materials? I have no desire to take BJCP, but wouldn't mind knowing more about different beers.Marmot

[Thirsty]

What is everyone using for study materials?

The exam study guide pretty much gives you everything you need for the basics, but the other links here have some good nuggets in there as well.https://www.bjcp.org/examcenter.php

[jammer]

Congrats! Theres no way in hell i could remember all that stuff. Good job!

[Sidney Porter]

What is everyone using for study materials? I have no desire to take BJCP, but wouldn't mind knowing more about different beers.Marmot

If that is your goal the style guidelines is going to give you aroma, flavor, mouthfeel, typical ingredients, etc. It will also give you some history which will help you put the different style in context to each other. There are also commercial example. I would also look at the sections of the study guide that deals with flavor profiles and off flavors. This will help you understand how the different flavor affect the beer. I think a lot of people focus on the off flavors but I think understanding the "correct" flavors is in some ways more important in understanding styles. The off flavors are important in troubling shooting you brewing. But flavor profiles and off flavors are not mutually exclusive there are flavors that are off flavors in one style but appropriate in others, or flavors that are appropriate at one level but too much is bad.There are commercial flavor kits you can buy, but you can put them together pretty easily, I think there are instructions in the study guide, also in Mosher radical brewing as well as in evauluating beer which is a collection of essays published by the brewing association. Evauluation beer is pretty good because it gives several different opinions on sensory perceptions.

[Sidney Porter]

As far as studing for the actual exam. A lot of the prep course that I have seen, and the one that I took in 2007 focus on tasting the commercial examples, and with then have lectures on ingredients, cities, etc to aid in the essays. This makes for an enjoyable experience getting to sample the styles together.This past winter / spring myself and another guy, gave an online course where we focused on understanding the questions,essay writing techniques, how to format the the answers so that they were expressed the information consisely. we also broke down the statistical likely hood of a style being on the exam which allowed the people to focus on specific styles that would probably be on the exam as well paying attention to the number of potential questions for any one question if the pool was smaller we focused on ensuring the knew each of those answers extremely well (ie question 9 is always brewing process / trouble shooting there are 5 possible questions (20% chance of getting one of the questions), but question 2,4, and 8 are style questions I think that it pulled from 6 questions so you had a 50% chance of getting one of these, so more focused was based on the style questions) these numbers are from memory so they might be wrong.Each week people were assigned questions, and each of the participants would provide feed back on the other's answers.As far as the tasting question the focus was understanding how it is graded, and controlling the things that you could. For example scoring accuracy and perception are compared to the proctor's you could blow that piece if you miss a fault, but descriptive ability, feedback, and completeness and communication are more subjective and you can control this part of the answer.We also had discusses on each of the styles. But we actually never actually got together and sampled the commercial examples.As far as participation in the course, a lot of people didn't participate much, it was too much like school (it was actually mirrored in someways after University of PHX online courses) and I think some people were affraid to put there written work out there for constructive criticism. It also put a lot of the work on the students rather than me. That being said the people who actually participate in the class all scored certified. So I think the format works and makes sense from a time stand point and helping people do well on the exam but isn't as fun as most prep course I have scene. After we get the hard copies of the scores we will compare the results to what was focused on a tweak the course, for future use.

[denny]

I retook the tasting portion on May 9th. Received an email yester day that I scored high enough to move me up to National. The actual results are in the mail, but getting the email confirm was nice. I think that I am done with National, I don't see taking the time to memorize everything you need write for Master.

The one and only time I took the test, I scored 1 point below Master. NO WAY am I gonna take that sucker again for that one point!

[Thirsty]

I think some people were affraid to put there written work out there for constructive criticism.

This is the one thing I wish I did more of in preperation. I reviewed content, and had a game plan in my head, but I wish I actually wrote out each question, because when I took the exam I then had to think of the best wording to express my points, and include all the points they wanted covered. Some practice writing out the essays is huge advice to anyone taking it in the future.

[Thirsty]

I got my score a few weeks back. Faster than I thought it would be.

When did you take it? what was the turnaround?

[orudis]

What is everyone using for study materials? I have no desire to take BJCP, but wouldn't mind knowing more about different beers.Marmot

IMO the most bang for your buck would be to print out the BJCP guidelines and read them as you taste some of the commercial examples for each category. In short, the study material=beer.

[denny]

This is the one thing I wish I did more of in preperation. I reviewed content, and had a game plan in my head, but I wish I actually wrote out each question, because when I took the exam I then had to think of the best wording to express my points, and include all the points they wanted covered. Some practice writing out the essays is huge advice to anyone taking it in the future.

I went through the example questions until I could answer each one in my head.