New Hogtown BJCP Judges
By Mark Tumarkin

During the past year, a group of Hogtown Brewers has been meeting monthly at Dave and Sara Perez's house (Thank you, Sara!!) to prepare for the BJCP exam. The number of students has varied, with a high of about 10; and has been taught, or led, or confused (or all of the above) by a number of the previous judging class. We also had a review/study session led by Ron Bach, a Master Judge from the Central Florida Homebrewers in Orlando.

Five of these would-be judges took the exam in Mid-April when Jeff Gladish came up from Tampa to proctor the exam, assisted by Sue Smith. After what seemed like an interminable wait of four months, we finally got the results. Well, we got emails with the results. We are still waiting for the actual exam packets. The grading process is almost as intense as the study process.

Still, there was much rejoicing in Hogtown when the results came in. Dave Perez, Bruce Stevens, Jim Ritchart, and Fred Buhl are now all BJCP judges. Congratulations, for a job well done. At the time of writing this, Bob Bates is out of town. Hopefully, he has passed as well. Confirmation of this will have to await his return.

This is a very difficult exam and a long study process and I'm sure everyone is glad to be through. Now, these new judges need to start attending competitions and building up there experience points. They will certainly increase the judge pool for our in-club style competitions as well. These club competitions provided good experience that certainly helped in the tasting portion of the exam.

We have a moderately small club, but a relatively large number of judges for our size. I doubt that many clubs, regardless of size, have a larger percentage of judges. Our judges have been going to competitions throughout the Florida for the past four years. Over this time; we have developed excellent relationships with many of the other clubs and judges throughout Central and North Florida. These ties will come in handy when we put on our own competition in Gainesville next year. We will be able to attract a large pool of judges to come to Hogtown and help when we need them. This new group of judges will become a valuable part of that larger community of judges and brewers. This is another side of our hobby that I'm sure they will come to enjoy as much as the rest of our HB judges do.

Again, Congratulations to all the new judges!!

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