4 Week Mead Judge Training Class

This class is being offered to any BJCP judge in the Portland area - and by “any judge” we are including provisional judges, as long as you’ve taken the beer tasting exam you’re welcome to join the class.

This will be a four week class, mostly occurring on Tuesdays in October. Three of the sessions will be at the Oddfellows Lodge in North Portland, at 6:30 PM; the fourth class has not been scheduled and will either be at the Oddfellows Lodge sometime in November, or will be a Tuesday in October at another location. The cost for the class will be $80 for OBC members, or $115 for non-OBC members. The class cost will not include either the online mead exam or the tasting exam, which is yet to be scheduled but will likely be in the spring.

The approximate syllabus for this class will be:

Week 1:

• How to judge meads, a meads structure and wine terminology, when its useful and when its not. 
• How the mead scoresheet differs from the beer scoresheet
• Tasting panel of Categories M1A, M1B, M1C

Week 2:

• Strategies for the online mead exam, more on fruit quality and structure. 
• Tasting panel of categories M2A through M2E (fruited meads)

Week 3:

• Honey tasting panel (10+ common honeys often used in PNW meads)
• Mead tasting panel of categories M3A and M3B (spiced meads)

Week 4:

• Mead off flavors
• M4A is bad, Eastern European and Ethiopian meads deserve more, Scott and Alex have opinions, prepare yourselves.
• Mead tasting panel of categories M4A and M4B (we are having multiple Polish and Ethiopian meads shipped)