Preparing for the BJCP online entrance exam
The Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) is a global organisation that provides training materials, competition registration and examination programs for for judges of beer, mead and cider. As well as certifying judges, it produces style guidelines for mead, beer and cider that have become the basis for competitions, marketing and recipe design for amateur and professional brewers worldwide.
Its examination and education program covers technical aspects of brewing, world beer styles, the purpose of the BJCP, and judging procedures, and by demonstrating practical judging skills.
The Canberra Brewers have participated in BJCP programs for decades, with members taking part in the first exams in Australia. The club runs a BJCP style course each year, taking about a dozen home brewers and members of the Canberra beer community through a bespoke 11-session course where participants sampled more than 100 different beers across more than 77 different beer styles, while learning about brewing techniques, recipe formulation and beer history.
Every two years, the club also hosts a BJCP Judging exam, where examinees have 90 minutes to judge 6 beers across a wide variety of styles. They are then assessed by BJCP graders in scoring accuracy, perception, descriptive ability, feedback and completeness.
To sit the exam, participants must first pass the BJCP online entrance exam. The 60 minute exam includes 180 multiple-choice, true/false, and multiple answer questions, covering BJCP program and ethics, beer styles, beer characteristics, and processes and ingredients. While technically open book, the number of questions to be answered in a limited space of time (20 seconds per question!) means participants have very little time to look up answers.
Based on the excellent resource on the now outdated Beer Syndicate Compare-O-Matic, Canberra Brewers members have created the below resource which allows users to quickly display up to three BJCP styles side-by-side and help them find answers to questions. A downloadable Excel spreadsheet tool [XLS 121 KB] Is also available (with thanks to Frank Michell).