Preparing for the BJCP exam

By Mark Tumarkin

Scott Graham, from MASH (Miami Area Society of Homebrewers), asked me for web links to help their BJCP study group in preparation for taking the BJCP exam. My first thought was just to send him all my beer bookmarks. The BJCP exam is pretty comprehensive, testing many different areas of beer knowledge. But I thought, what the hell, this'll give me a good reason to organize my bookmarks, and hopefully both the MASH study group and others will find this helpful.

And as long as I'm putting in this much effort; I might as well dedicate it to Ed Wolfe. Ed is one of the contributing authors to the BJCP study guide. You'll see that he wrote the first section, Beer Evaluation and the Judging Process. At the time that Hogtown Brewers organized its' first BJCP study group, we were lucky enough to have Ed as a member. He led that first study group. We started out with eight brewers, five of whom took the exam. Thanks to the great preparation Ed gave us; we all passed the exam, two of us (not me) scored high enough for National ranking. So, thanks Ed, this is for you.

To those of you that are using this guide, I'd like to ask for your help too. This is a work in progress and I will continue to update this listing. The Web is constantly changing and this is far from a comprehensive listing. Please help by letting me know if you find any dead links or have some good links to add to this list.

My email address is mark_t@ix.netcom.com

And …. No, you don't have to read and study ALL these links to do well on the BJCP test, but learning about beer styles and brewing is so much fun that you'll want to explore them all sooner or later, so go grab a pint of beer and let's start ….

Begin at the BJCP Home Page
http://www.mv.com/ipusers/slack/bjcp/index.html and of course, pay particular attention to the Study Guide
http://www.mv.com/ipusers/slack/bjcp/study.html and the style guide
http://www.mv.com/ipusers/slack/bjcp/style-index.html

I'll try to organize this along the lines of the headings in the BJCP Study Guide -

World Beer Styles
Ingredients and the Brewing Process
Water
Malt and Adjuncts
Wort Production
Hops
Yeast and Fermentation
Troubleshooting

World Beer Styles

Ingredients and the Brewing Process

Water

Dave Draper - Brewing Waters of the World
http://hbd.org/~ddraper/beer/waterpro.html
Ken Schwartz' Brew Water Program
http://home.elp.rr.com/brewbeer/#Software
Brewing Water Analysis
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/wsawdon/www/water.html
AJ Lange on Brew Water Acidification
http://brewery.org/brewery/library/AcidifWaterAJD0497.html
Water Treatment
http://brewingtechniques.com/library/backissues/issue1.3/king.html

Malt and Adjuncts

All About Grains 101
http://brewery.org/brewery/library/Malt101.html
NorthWestern Malt Extract
http://www.nwextract.com/
Brewing with Rye
http://brewingtechniques.com/library/backissues/issue1.3/hayden.html
CAPs
http://brewingtechniques.com/library/backissues/issue2.1/jankowski.html

Wort Production

Preparing for the BJCP exam

By Mark Tumarkin

World Beer Styles

Ingredients and the Brewing Process

Water

Malt and Adjuncts

Wort Production

Hops

Yeast and Fermentation

Troubleshooting

General Knowledge, Link Sites, other stuff

Tasting and Judging

Beer Writers