Finally I took the BJCP Written Exam! It was rough, but it made sense

Finally I did it. On Saturday 15 October I sat for one hour and a half at a table, writing about beer. I delved into beer styles, crunching recipe numbers and explaining off-flavours. As the icing on the cake, I listed all malt types and yeasts choices based on specific parameters. In a nutshell: I took the BJCP Written Exam.

Finally I am free, lighter, no more early morning studying before starting my day job. It was not easy, memorizing all the stuff in my rusty memory, but with some practice I managed to do the job. I don’t know exactly how it went, I won’t for months since it usually takes a lot of time to get the results back, but I did it. I answered all the five questions in detail without faltering, no panic attacks, my right hand was still working properly without cramps after the 90 minutes hand-writing session and that was it.

At 6.30 pm I handed the paper over to Omer Basha, our regional BJCP representative, and celebrated with some pints at Luppolo Station, in Rome.

[SPOILER: my score was a stunning 93/100! More on that here]

Without doubt, one of the most challenging exams of my life. Well, my adult life, after the university studies which ended back in 2003.

In the next months I will delve into how I prepared for the exam, sharing advice on how and what to study, practical study material and stuff like that. Today, I would instead focus on something different.

Was it worth it?

A lot of people think that this exam is just about memorizing a pile of data with no practical use. Judges are allowed to read the styles guidelines during the judging sessions, aren’t they? So why memorizing all the beer styles in such detail? What for? To show off with friends and fellow judges? Does studying for the BJCP Written Exam really help improve your knowledge about beer, or is it just a kind of delusional race into madness?

I was skeptical before really getting into it, as a lot of people are, but in the end I changed my mind. Here is why.

BECOMING AN EXPERT

I used to play drums back in the days. I started hitting the drums when I was 12, went to music school for several years, played in some bands. I was considered a good drummer, I used to write songs and compose a lot of music, but never really got to be really good at drumming. I had a feeling for the beat, for the music, but technically I never went that far.

The main reason was that I liked music more than drums. The drums were just a way to express myself in the music world. I liked writing songs, being on stage, spending time with my fellow bandmates. I did not exercise much, I just did what I was told by my various drumming teachers, but mostly I enjoyed playing after famous songs, band albums or just hitting the drums to let some steam off.

I have never been an expert on drumming. Ever. But now I would like to become an expert on beer, and I am on my way.

Becoming an expert on something requires a lot of passion, commitment and focus. Malcolm Gladwell says that 10.000 hours of practice on anything will make you an expert. But it is not as simple as that. Of course, you have to build some knowledge and practice a lot to become an expert on something. But memorizing stuff is not enough. It is actually a mix of memory, pattern recognition, practice, trial and error, validation.

This concepts are well summarized in this video by Veritasium, where 4 criteria for becoming an expert on something are described and explained in detail:

1. many repeated attempts with feedback
2. a valid environment (makes things predictable)
3. timely feedback to ease up learning the regularities of the environment. Delayed feedback is a problem
4. Don’t get too comfortable. In order to learn you have to push beyond your comfort zone

Tasting beer around the world and/or judging beer in competitions usually don’t properly match these criteria. There is no real feedback (from the judge point of view) and the environment, the tasting experience itself, is not that predictable after all (tasting is subject to a lot of different bias). After some judging in beer competitions, often with all the same people, the comfort zone embraces you and never lets go.

I am not saying those activities are not important for a judge, they actually are pivotal, but doing just that could not be enough to increase your knowledge and judging abilities.