2021 BJCP Style Guidelines

With changes to the 2021 BJCP Beer Style Guidelines come changes to the way that we need to prepare for the exams. The new exam will use the new guidelines starting August 1, 2022. So far, there haven’t been any changes to the BJCP Study Guide. The BJCP Study Guide provides the most comprehensive review of the questions on the BJCP Entrance, Tasting and Written Exams.

Focusing on the BJCP Written Proficiency Exam, answers to two questions will need to be addressed and or modified from the way we answer those questions today. These questions are:

• Beer Styles Questions(S0. Describe, compare and contrast these three styles: style-1, style-2, and style-3.) and,
• Recipe and Procedure Question (T14. Provide a complete ALL-GRAIN recipe and procedure for brewing a(n) <Style>.)

The BJCP occasionally modifies the Style Descriptions and Target Parameters that change what may have been a correct answer on past exams.

At minimum, there are changes to the the finishing gravity of Märzen and the color of German Pils that will require finessing the way we memorize target parameters for the Recipe and Procedure Question. Given the changes seen on these two beers, we can expect to also make changes to the typical values for the original gravity (OG), IBU, ABV and color (SRM or textual description) within the Beer Styles Question.

I’ll be updating the BJCP Written Exam Prep course in the coming months to match the 2021 BJCP Style Guidelines for exams after August 1, 2022