After watching a Food Network special on The Great American Beer Festival, I'm wondering if there's a beer contest where the judges secretly buy beer out of stores (the brewer not knowing which store) and then use these to compare against each other. This seems more honest judging process to determine which is the best beers that us consumers can purchase than the specially brewed, bottled, packaged, and delivered beer submitted to The Great American Beer Festival. Anyone know of any beer contest(s) so structured?
Eh? The beer submitted to GABF for judging is wha-wha-what? The beer for judging is normally from plain bottles, and is poured out of sight of the judges by stewards. The judges normally see nothing but the beer - no special brewing, bottling, packaging, or other such folderol. As for delivery, well yeah, the brewers might make sure the beer is a freshly delivered as possible. Specially brewed? I know for a fact that the clear majority of brewers bring exactly the same beers that they make to be bought by the general public.
Nice little conspiracy theory, but that dog don't hunt.
beers that us consumers can purchase than the specially brewed, bottled, packaged, and delivered beer submitted to The Great American Beer Festival. Anyone know of any beer contest(s) so structured?
My local merchant stopped buying in Allagash lately because he said that the local distributor was only sending him 6-month old product. If anyone had bought Allagash here then, it would not have been fair. Any independent purchaser for a legitimate contest would have to jet all over the country in a short period of time--and still manage to keep the beer chilled.
On another note, I went into a local brewpub lately because their Oktoberfest had just medalled at GABF. I tried it--it was rich and sweet. I commented on it to the publican, and he said that THIS wasn't the Oktoberfest that had one the medal--that this was actually the Oktoberfest brewed at the downtown branch--and it was pretty different. Their own branch had indeed brewed the GABF winner--but they had run out. Then in came a wedding party. One guy came to the bar and said that all the beers were weird here, and asked me what was good, since I had a line-up of tasting glasses in front of me. I knew this was a no-win situation, but the amber lager was so light it was worthless, so I recommended that one. He ordered a weiss instead because the bride said it was light. Others came up and started to get really ornery. They stood there stonefaced after asking for Stoli--but all the brewpub had was Smirnoff. This was clearly a sin. And then there was no Yukon Jack (why not just order Canadian Club and add sugar cubes?!?). I almost suggested that they have English Leather on the rocks, because that was the only thing they would be able to taste anyway given how much they reeked of the stuff, but left instead, which seemed the thing to do.
What you've said so far is true and was shown on the special, but that doesn't really mean anything as far as whether the beer was store-bought or specially made for the judging ... as they showed on the special.
This isn't some conspiracy theory. What I state was SAID by microbrewers on the show, SHOWN on the show, and even one of the JUDGES that entered in his own beer (Dark Chocolate Stout ... if I remember correctly) was shown specially hand-bottling his own beer and stating why he's doing it.
I could see Consumer Reports doing such a contest, but I'm hoping there's one that's done like this every year. If Consumer Reports does it every year, that's fine. Do they?
Or do the opposite. Have the beers bought by a trusted parties around the country and chill-shipped to the judges so all the beers arrive within a day or two of each other at the judging location.
I lost faith in Consumer Reports magazine back in the late 1970s...they had a report on the Saab 99 automobile and they ranked the gas tank safety of that car as just average...the Saab 99 in the 1970s though had one of the safest gas tanks in the industry, so in other words the magazine was full of it so to speak. Figures the would rank Blue Ribbon so well.
Somehow Consumer Reports magazine makes me think of Corn Dogs...I hate Corn Dogs. :)
Or even better: Realize that beer judging, no matter how controlled the process and how skilled the practitioners, is a highly subjective process and merely states how well certain beers adhere to certain guidelines, and that it's kinda daft to base one's drinking decisions on the results of contests.
In other words, I think your proposal is much ado over nothing.
You don't care about beer contests. That's fine. It doesn't mean this discussion is worthless though. There are many people who do care or at least would like to know who places well in such contests. I'd just like to know of a contest(s) that uses secretly store-bought beers as the beers that will be judged.
Yes the judging at the GABF is highly subjective but as a brewer who medaled this year perhaps I can provide some insights that will allay some of Scott's fears. I work for a packaging brewery (25,000bbls pa), that ships to 37 states. We entered beers in 7 catagories, and received one medal. As the individual who was responsible for making sure that our samples for judging and the kegs for the festival floor were delivered on time I can state catagorically that we did not brew or package special samples for the competition. Samples for judging had to be at the AB distributorship in Denver by Friday September 6th. For a couple of months leading up to the festival we set aside a case from each packaging run of the beers we had entered, and during the last week of August we had a series of tastings to pick which samples we felt were the most representative of our products and those were our entries. FYI each of those packaging runs was of a minimum of 1000 cases and the rest all went out into the market place.
It may also interest you to know that judges who are also brewers are not permitted to judge any of the catagories that they have entered.
From an industry perspective, what I would like to see as a future development at the GABF, is to split some of the more heavily contested catagories, eg, American Style Pale Ale 71 entries, and Americann IPA 94 entries into multiple classes, brewpubs and shipping breweries. I have no hard data but I suspect that the majority of medals are going to the smaller breweries with limited distribution and brew pubs. The positive side to this is that there are a lot of brewpubs brewing some great beers, however the converse is that many of these beers are brewed in small batches, transfered to a serving tank and then drunk right where they are brewed. A very different kettle of fish from brewing a beer in larger batches 50 - 100 bbls, that is going to be bottled and still taste good 60 days later when the consumer picks it up from the store shelf on the other side of the country.
Here is the other thing to think about, and this of course does not apply to a brewpub, which serves their beer on premise. A lot of the beers made in this country quickly leaves the control of the brewer, and is at the mercy of the distributor and retail merchant. They are the ones who are responsible for making sure that the beer you buy has been handled properly and is delivered to your hands in the best possible condition. Having a competition where beers are bought off the shelf and judged, would be more a competition to see who is the best beer distributor or retail merchant.
I know of two stores in my town that have well-stocked beer shelves and coolers, both deal with the same distributor, but one shop consistently has the better-condition beers than the other, because the first shop has a person who sole job is to rotate the stock and pull off the shelf any beer that did not sell, and is past its flavor prime. The second shop just leaves the old bottles on shelf, and dusts off the bottles periodically. If you bought the beers for judging off the shelf at the second merchants store, you would have incredibly worse beers than beers bought at the first merchant.
I watched the GABF special, and can relate to those brewmasters that hand-bottled and took some extra care to make sure the beer arrived to the judging in the best possible condition. The judging is about the beer, not how others may mistreat the beer before the consumer can get his hands (or taste buds) on it.
Additionally, looking at the GABF rules about the beers entered for judging, which can be found at
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, under "Entering Your Beers Into the GABF Judging", is found this requirement: "Entries must be commercially available and brewed in the US".
So, all of these beers at the GABF should be available for the consumer somewhere in the country, it is just a question if has been treated well before you bought it.
I'm just saying what I saw and heard on that special. That you do this is fine, but the special clearly showed that extra care was taken by other contestants that wouldn't normally be done for the average consumer's beer bought from them.
See even you state that you're only sending your best to the contest.
Now don't get me wrong. I don't think you've done anything evil or misleading. What you and the others did was allowed by the GABF. It's their contest and how they run it is up to them. I'm just seeking one that's more likely to represent what us average consumers will be drinking.
Yes, they made that clear in the special. There was a Black brewmaster (he makes Black Chocolate Stout) that was also a judge and he stated he doesn't judge the categories which he enters his beers to.
First, should there be a category then for homebrewers? Then again, are homebrewers even allowed into the contest?
Second, this would be a step in the "right" direction (as far as I'm concerned). I would just hope that the beers selected for the shipping brewery categories were store bought.
I'm just pointing out that I don't see how using store-bought beer (and what are you going to do about the huge number of draught-only beers in that scenario?) is really going to make any difference. It's still a subjective contest in an artificial environment that simply states a certain beer measures up best against certain criteria. And, knowing how judging often plays out - the biggest or bitterest beer wins 90 percent of the time - I find the results even more worthless.
Are you actually making purchasing decisions based on judgements at beer contests? That's what I'm saying is daft. Sure, everyone finds out about beers they might not have otherwise via these contests, but I've seen enough cases where an award winning beer isn't any better than a lot of similar beers out there.
I'll try stuff out of curiosity, because I respect the brewery, because of its reputation, because of friends' recommendations, etc. Winning a contest is pretty low on the list. But maybe that's just me.
This would merely be something that my type of a beer contest would naturally take into consideration and work to insure a level playing field. The contest evaluating the beer distributors and retail stores. Secretly purchasing bottles from what's considered the best distributors and retail stores. Clearly publicly stating what standards these distributors and stores would have to have for the contest to purchase beer from them. On the bright side, this might improve beer distribution and retail presentation if the contest were to give it's stamp of approval and allow the stores to advertise this. "This retail store and its distributors are approved by the International Honest Beer Contest. Beer bought from this store is beer considered to be properly handled by its beer distributors and the store itself. Because of this, beer sold in this store might be secretly purchased and judged for IHBC." For beer connoisseurs, this could be the thing that would make them buy their beer from one local store rather than another.
For the judging, I would hope the contest would let the public know where and when the winning beers were bought. For the brewers, this information would be given to them so they know the where and when ... regardless if they won or not.
No, if we saw the same special, it clearly showed that some of the brewmasters were making special batches (taking at least extra special care when they're brewed) for the contest.
I'd disagree. From watching the special, it has more to do with you being luck enough to have beer from the same specially-brewed batch of beer that was tapped for the contest. Not that the beer they normally make is the same beer that the judges taste.
Now if there's common seasonal beers, I'd hope my type of a contest would then be done again at these times so these seasonal beers are tasted at the time they'd be tasted by the public. Handing out maybe something like Winter Beers awards.
Unfortunately, as no one has brought up a contest structured as what I'm seeking, I guess it just doesn't exist. Too bad. If I had money to throw around, I'd start it up but I don't.
Why is that surprising? No brewery is going to go "What are we going to do with that one infected batch we had? I know! Let's enter it in a contest." Of course they're going to grab their freshest stuff. It's sort of like how if you're going out on a date with that woman you've been chasing for months, you don't just grab your workout shorts and the t-shirt you wear when working on the car. You're going to dress your best.
Neither move is surprising in the least.
That wouldn't be very fair to the breweries, IMO. In the typical retail environment, the beer's been out of the brewer's hands for a long while, and had a few stops over which the brewery has absolutely no control. Perhaps the store stores the beer warm, under bright lights. Perhaps the beer sits in the back of the store in an unrefrigerated room. Perhaps it sits in a warm/hot warehouse at the distributor. Perhaps the distributor sits on it for months.
These are not all worst-case scenarios. These are common occurances in the three-tier system. Even the most dilligent brewers have difficulty maintaining quality control throughout the supply chain.
Your criteria - buy the beer at a store - is unfair to the brewers and invites a whole new range of complications. Which stores do you buy the beer from? What if one store keeps their craft beers well, but another doesn't? Then the breweries represented at the latter store are put at an automatic disadvantage through no fault of their own.
And, as I mentioned earlier, what are you going to do about draught-only beer? Many craft breweries sell their beer only this way. Brewpubs, certainly. You going to send out armies of people with growlers, who then have to haul the beer to the testing site overnight since draught beer sitting in a growler goes south pretty quickly?
No, they're not, and no they shouldn't. The GABF is a brewery competition. There are loads of homebrew competitions, including the national one put on by the AHA (which shares the same parent as the GABF) to cover the homebrewers.
See the problems outlined above. How is this better?
Doubtless, some breweries are brewing special things just for the competition. Breweries do this sort of thing a lot - brewing special beers for festivals, contests, etc. But, usually, it's a special style or variety they don't often do. For breweries that have a regular, staple beer that they're entering, it's too much time and expense to suddenly brew a special batch of it. Someone like Sierra Nevada need the pale ale to be consistent, and they're not going to suddenly put an inconsistent batch out on the market just because they want a "speical" batch for a contest. Doubtless some do that. But I'd say it's in a vast minority.
And, by the way, don't believe everything you see on TV. A good rule of thumb that most people learned years ago, but very applicable to beer. Most TV stories and newspaper articles get basic details very, very wrong (such as the NY Times talking about fermenting hops a few months ago).
For the simple reason that the beers then tasted would be ones the consumers would be able to purchase and not ones specially brewed for the contest. It's like doing drive tests on cars secretly purchased from car dealership rather than cars delivered to the testing grounds by the manufacturer. Sure, some car manufacturers are going to ship to the contest cars randomly picked off the assembly line, but there's no guarantee that all car manufacturers are going to do likewise. Add into this equation some perceived value of winning the contest and the temptation to send only your best is just that much stronger.
I'm not seeking a beer contest that takes into consideration all the different beers. Just store-bought beer. The beer most us will be able to purchase from our local retail store and not need to live within reasonable driving distance to taste. Now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with draught-only beers ... or home-brewed beers for that matter. It just isn't what I'm seeking in a contest.
Correct. All I'm seeking is a less artificial environment than what GABF has ... as far as store-bought beers are concerned.
That's your opinion and that's fine for you to have. We've already established that you don't care about beer contests.
Yes. There are a lot of beers out there and I wouldn't mind knowing what experts in the field think are the best. I do this all the time with almost anything important that I buy.
I would consider you thinking that contests don't help the purchasing process is rather daft.
Again, that's your opinion. Perhaps your tastebuds are not that discriminating.
Yeah, I'd say that's probably just you. By profession, I'm a marketing consultant so I do understand the importance of winning awards for businesses. Any business that was a client of mine that would take your attitude towards awards would be one that I'd consider to have a problem.
That makes no sense to me at all. If we're looking for a contest that is judging the best beers as people can buy them - well, people buy a lot of draught beer. In some parts fo the country, draught sales are huge and is the primary way people drink their beer. Why rule that out right off?
That's an opinion shared by many more people than just me.
You've established that, and it's not very accurate. I don't care about beer contests for making my purchase decisions. There's a big difference between that and not caring about beer contests. The fact that I've judged at some professional beer contests would be kinda weird for me to do if I didn't care about contests.
I think contests are a good thing and a good way for breweries to get exposure and recognition. However, I know enough not to regard contests as pointing out the best beers available, etc. I simply view them for what they are, not as some larger statement on who brews the best beer in the country or whatever.
And contests often serve as a great chance to go to where the contest is held. As the three days I spent at the Great British Beer Festival this year amply illustrates. I definitely cared about that particular event.
Perhaps you have no clue who I am, how refined my tastebuds are and therefore have no basis to make such a statement. I could play that little game too and say that perhaps you're too lemming-like and will just appreciate whatever the "experts" tell you to appreciate. I don't think that's a fair statement to make, however. Just like saying my tastebuds are not that discriminating isn't a fair statement to make. Especially on the basis of a statement like I've seen plenty of cases where award-winning beers weren't better than other beers available out there. Why does that seem such an absurd statement? Especially considering how a not-insignificant number of well-regarded breweries don't bother with contests?
Oddly enough, my job is marketing as well. There's a difference between what I'd recommend for a business to do and what I do. Let's take awards. My current client is an automaker. They have a new car that has won gobs of awards, including some of the most prestigeous ones out there. Has it helped their sales? Nope. They are well, well below their sales targets.
Awards are important for one thing: creating recognition and getting a product more visibility in the marketplace. It does not mean the product is better - or that it's going to be commercially successful. Beta was widely considered better than VHS, and look which format survived. There are countless other examples.
Tell that to, say, Victory then. A brewery which, IIRC, has stopped entering contests. Are they a "problem," even though they're one of the most highly respected and sought-after breweries in the business?
That wasn't very clear. The awards commentary is separate from the difference between what I'd recommend for a client and what I'd do as a consumer. Imagine there's a paragraph break before "Let's take awards."
As far as the differences between business behavior and consumer behavior: there are lots of marketing behaviors that I would recommend and encourage because I know that most consumers aren't very careful or dilligent, and therefore are susceptible to persuasion. As an educated consumer in certain areas, I'm less susceptible to such marketing messages, because I can see through the fluff. Therefore, even though there may be an approach on the table that I know wouldn't work with me, that doesn't mean I wouldn't recommend it because I know most consumers will go for it.
And that's the deal with beer contests. They're good (though not necessary) for raising exposure and recognition for a brewery. As an educated and experienced consumer, I know that they're not representative of what they claim to be: this is the best beer in the country.
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