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How to beerfest at home when you are quarantined

I participated in my first virtual beerfest put on by https://surfbeerfest.com/ while locked down in quarantine due to Covid. They run a couple of different beer festivals on the beautiful Central Coast of California. This year they’re running three @ home festivals. At first, this seems contrary to the whole concept of the festival. Mingling, tasting, eating, sunburning, waiting in line for beer, waiting in line for the good old port ‘o potty…maybe they are on to something. Here’s how to beerfest at home when you are quarantined!

Top tips for a beerfest at home

Throw all of your beers in a cooler where you will be “participating”. I made the mistake of leaving my beers in the fridge which called for a surprising amount of running back and forth to stay on pace.
Have glassware of different shapes and sizes available at your fingertips. You’ll hopefully end of with a variety of different beer styles and you want to showcase them as best you can in the right glass. Additionally, some of these (hopefully a lot of these) will be keepers for the intermissions. Some will get dumped like at any other festival. Which leads us to…
Have a dump bucket. You aren’t going to love every beer. That’s probably good since you aren’t going to knock back 12-14 full beers in an afternoon and feel great about it the next day. (Alternatively, share with your Covid-19 buddy!)
Eat a good meal before hand. The Surf ‘n’ Suds Festival started at Noon and I didn’t have a meal plan in place. You should.
Hydrate. Have a pitcher of water by your side and drink it.

Format

The Surf ‘n’ Suds Festival was twelve beers done in three groups of four. Maybe four groups of three. It gets a little fuzzy. The events team had a live stream going and then played prerecorded videos from the breweries. It was a mix of iPhone one takes to pretty highly produced affairs. All of them fun to watch. You learn a little bit about the brewery and the beer from the brewer or owner. Something that is sometimes hard to do at a in person beerfest. This was probably one of the best parts about the festival besides having no line for the restroom and being at home already when it was over. During the live feed you can also participate in the chat. There was some friendly banter about the beers which provided the feeling of participating with others.

A fantastic Pils from Enegren Brewing Company during the beerfest

In between the beer sets there were local bands playing prerecorded sets. This was a good time to grab some snacks and hit the restroom. The sets of beer go quickly with not much time to mess around (or run to find the next beer in the fridge).

DJ taking us to the end of the day of the beerfest at home

After the event was over there was a Zoom afterparty with some of the breweries. There was a chance to ask questions of the brewers and the beers.

Overall, I was surprised with how much fun I had. It was good enough to do it again next month. I bought an extra ticket for a friend so we’ll have another added dimension of connecting via FaceTime. Buy tickets at https://surfbeerfest.com/ They ship to anyone in California or find an event near you.

Now that you’ve learned how to beerfest at home when you are quarantined, find out how to make your own damn beer!

#silverlinings

Brewing

Get beer delivered to your door in California fresh from local breweries! One of the silver linings of the whole Covid thing is that beer delivery direct to your door from breweries is now much more prevalent. If you live in California here are couple of my favorites:

Please support your local brewery!

Or learn how to make your own beer!

Homebrewing; A hobby you can drink!

Brewing

I had my first homebrew when I was in college. I may or may not have been of legal drinking age at the time. My buddy’s dad had been homebrewing for a little while. I didn’t even know that you could make beer. I figured it took all kinds of mysterious equipment and a factory. Definitely a factory. I think it was Sparrow Hawk Porter. You know the one from “The Bible”. Charlie’s book. It was good. Or at least I thought so at the time. It didn’t have a label on it and how did he get the cap on?

Getting Started

After I started getting paychecks at my first real job my buddy and I figured we’d give it a shot. It was a dry malt extract beer. All the stuff came in a kit. It wasn’t supposed to be a session beer but it ended that way since we forgot to add one of the bags of extract, but it was our beer and we got drunk on it. There is nothing like the feeling of getting a buzz from something that you conjured up in your kitchen. My setup may be a little fancier now that I’ve moved to the garage from the stove but the sense of accomplishment is the same.

Since then, my homebrewing has become significantly better. At my first homebrew club meeting with the Mad Zymurgists my beer was best described as a “butter bomb”. It was humbling but I received support from the club. They weren’t making fun of me, they just wanted to help me make better beer. Since then, I’ve brewed a lot of beer and became a beer judge. I’ve won some ribbons, judged a bunch of cool competitions from Maui to Philly and moved my way up the ladder with the BCJP.

I’ve been brewing for over twenty years and I still wish that I started earlier. My hope now is to give back a little and help people brew better beer and know what a good beer tastes like. Check out the exam prep classes and Resources page see what might help you in your beer journey.

BJCP Written Exam Overview Course

BJCP Exam

BJCP Written Exam

Our first BJCP Written Exam course has been loaded up! Check out the Written Exam Overview course on the website for free. The course is a simple overview of the exam. Our next course, the BJCP Written Exam Prep Course, will provide in depth study materials, break down strategies for each question, quizzes and more to help you master the BJCP exam.

Additional Resources

Additionally, check out the Resources page for suggested books for additional study material for the BJCP Written Exam.

Becoming a Certified BJCP Beer Judge

BJCP Exam

The hardest exam you’re every going to take…or at least the most subjective.

Becoming a BJCP Certified Beer Judge isn’t for the faint of heart

When I first sat down for the test to become a BJCP Certified Beer Judge it was a combination of both the written exam and the tasting exam combined. You sat down and started the written exam and after a while you received a beer to judge. You wrote a full scoresheet to the best of your ability and then got back to where you left off on the written exam…then another beer showed up. Imagine taking the hardest exam you ever had in college while drinking beer. I’m not talking a hangover from the night before. Full on drinking. Now, one could argue that you should only be consuming enough to fully evaluate the beer but I’ll argue that it isn’t going to benefit your written test any and those ounces add up.

Luckily, the exam has changed for the better. There is an online exam to separate the wheat from the chaff and a requirement to hit a minimum score before sitting for the written exam. This has reduced the burden on a small population of graders and improved the turn around time for exam results.

You’ve likely entered a few competitions if you are reading this. Getting good scores in comps and on the exam is kind of similar. Unfortunately, so far we haven’t come up with a machine to replace a judge. Therefore, competition scores are going to vary depending on the judge. However, if you keep entering solid beers, you will get rewarded with a solid score eventually. Taking the beer exam (at least the tasting and the written) sometimes takes the same process. Learn the beers, know your stuff, get rewarded with a good grade. In the meantime, there are some hints and tricks to being efficient with your time and maximizing you score. Don’t get me wrong; there aren’t a ton of work arounds for learning the material but there are some ways to get what you need to get down on paper.

We’ll be posting some exam courses shortly starting with the hardest, the written exam. These courses will help you maximize your beer knowledge and Master the BJCP. Find the links on our website.