John — no system is perfect!

BN – I will be the first one to admit that the current process for choosing the CBOB finalists is a bit of a shambles. There are huge regional lisst that all CAMRA members in the area can vote on – and the lead time is ridiculous, too. There have been attempts to change this via an AGM motion (can’t remember if it was succesful) and I think we haven’t heard the last of that.

The Norwegian homebrewing championships of the last three years have been won by a barley wine, an imperial IPA, and a smoke beer. Before that they used to always be won by fairly safe beers in terms of style. What’s changed is the judges, and not the method of judging, which is still by committee. So I suspect the reason the committee chooses a low-alcohol beer of moderate flavour is because this is what they like.

I won’t comment on the rest, as I know nothing about the Champion Beer of Britain or this year’s winner.

Marble Chocolate certainly is serious, but it’s not a real outlier — it’s at the strong end of the range you might find in a normal pub (don’t ask me to define ‘normal’…) and doesn’t have an extreme level of hopping.

Out of interest, why do you think Marble’s effort came second to Oscar Wilde? I suspect a lot of those who expressed outrage yesterday would say that MC is definitely the better beer.

I like them both and don’t know which I’d choose in a blind tasting.

BN is of course quite wrong when he says “Local branches choose the beers their members drink, locally.”, well at least as far as our festival in Stockport is concerned. We do get local beers but we also aim to get lots of interesting stuff from around the country, too.

Yes – all the tasting is blind so you have no idea at all what you are drinking. I chaired the panel at the National Winter Ales Festival that started Marble Chocolate on its journey. It was an easy winner but although it’s a beer I am very familiar with I didn’t guess what it was at the time.

For what it’s worth the previous year we had Elland 1872 Porter on our panel, and made it the winner. No-one can say that is an easy going beer!

Still looks to me like a process which would knock out anything intense or extreme by splitting the vote, even if they’ve made it that far through the various other ‘heats’.

Am I reading this right?