BJCP Exam in Fargo Next April

An update on the April BJCP exam in Fargo....it is full.

But we will be hosing another exam in September and about 8 of the 12 spots are already filled so if you are interested in becoming a BJCP judge, contact Susan (info in a prior post) and she can get you registered and help you with your preperation.

We expect maybe 500+ beers to show up at our Hoppy Halloween competion this October so we need more judges in ND and even if you can't do it this year, come to Fargo as we can use novice judges too and you get to see how the whole process works.

There are only 12 slots for this exam and they look to be filling up very fast. If there is enough interest, another test may be scheduled for August but probably only one study group leading up to the exam in April.

If you are truly interested, please email Susan Ruud at meadmkr@far.midco.net or susan.ruud@ndsu.edu and let her know.

She is running the prep class here in Fargo and has run several other prep classes in the past. She is a Grand Master level judge and BJCP Assistant Exam Director so she knows the program very well. You won't probably be able to make it to the study sessions in Fargo but you can get the emails from her on what you need to read to prepare and what to go over each week.

I might just be interested in this, depending on the dates. Thanks for the heads up!

In April of 2011, the PHC will be hosting a BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program) exam. There is room for 12 people to take this exam and any slots not used by the Fargo brewers can be filled by others who want to take the exam. We try and hold an exam ever couple of years so the next one on Fargo might not be until 2013.

More info about the exam and the program is available at the BJCP website http://www.bjcp.org
This is a very tough and involved exam and you really have to know the brewing process, ingredients, beer styles, and tasting. It is not the type of test that you can cram for in a week and hope do well. We set up a study class of 10-12 weekly meetings before the exam and have had a pretty good success rate of getting people to pass.

If you would like to see how the judging works in practice and to see if you might want to put forth the effort to become a BJCP judge, I would highly recommend you come to Fargo and help out with our Hoppy Halloween competition judging October 29th and 30th. You could help judge or help steward (ie bring the beers to the judges and other gopher work during judging). You can even start accumulating judging points at Hoppy Halloween before you have even taken the exam.

Let me know if you have any questions on the exam, Hoppy Halloween judging, or the study materials we use. Besides the benefits of telling people you are a real Beer Judge, everyone who goes through the effort to study the information it takes to pass the test say that it makes them a better brewer.

Dean
BJCP Certified Beer Judge