Is there a consumer's beer contest?

I agree with you 100%--but this does put the breweries at a disadvantage if the distributors and retailers don't care squat about the proper handling of beer. Most of these individuals approach it from the perspective of the megaswill--which is pasturized and/or treated with products to increase shelf life, as well as having the advantage of moving off the shelf fast. Most retailers don't understand the fragility of most microbrewed beer, and couldn't care a less about it either. I wish they all knew and cared, but they don't. I'm not sure if having a contest like you advocate would change their minds, as long as most of their business is the megabrews.

Like anyone who is going to have their work scrutinized more carefully on a certain day than on an any other average day, they are taking extra special care to do the job as perfect as possible for the event. This doesn't mean that the recipe is different (i.e. special ingredients, etc.), but extra care is taken to make sure the batch has as little mistakes or flaws as possible. Compare it to an average day on any job, versus that same day with the boss looking over your shoulder all day. I bet the day with the boss looking over your shoulder is different than the other days (not much, but different).

Being a homebrew judge, I would venture that the difference between the "special batches" and the "standard batches" would be little to none, with the little differences being minor flaws that would escape the palate of the average consumer. Not that the average consumer has poor taste buds, but these judges have trained their palate to pick up very subtle off flavors and aromas, and that is what they are looking for in these beers (most all of these beers in a given category are "good", but the judges need to rank them best to worst--basically nit-picking subtle differences between each beer). The average consumer would enjoy either version, and probably not notice the difference (if any).

If anyone ever managed to get a contest like that off the ground, I would be excited to see the results, and put the results to good use in buying my beers.

Kevin

Because unless you live within reasonable driving distance of that draught-only brewery, you'll very likely never have an opportunity to sample and enjoy their beer. What I'm seeking is a contest amongst those that distribute their beer thus are more available for the consumer to possibly purchase, drink, and enjoy. Just as GABF doesn't accept home-brewed beers, my contest wouldn't accept draught-only beers.

Did I say it wasn't? And are you saying your opinion is everyone's opinion?

That was what I was referring to.

I have no clue who you are.

Note that I said "perhaps".

Given your statement that winning beers taste like "a lot of similar beers out there" and that I used the word "perhaps", I think my statement was reasonable.

Have I ever said in this entire thread that I'd only appreciate what experts say is the best? No. What I have said is that I'd like to know what the experts would say if a contest was more geared for the average consumer.

I stand by my statement for the reasons I've just given above.

Did I say it was an absurd statement? Please don't go the strawman route.

Odd. I would have then assumed that if you're a marketing consultant you would have always had a spellchecker look over your posts before letting them go.

Perhaps that's due to the one that is handling their marketing. ;-)

That's incorrect. Awards can also help in the consumer decision process. Many consumers do pay attention to what awards products and services earn and they are wise to do so. If you're a marketing consultant, it is rather odd you don't know this.

It does, however, lend credence to that view.

Quality does help sales, but no business should depend on just that to generate sales.

I think you misunderstood what I wrote. Victory brewery would not "be" a problem if they didn't enter contests. I would, however, view their lack of participation as a problem that I would need to address if I was their marketing consultant. Perhaps there's sound reasoning behind not entering such contests. Then again, perhaps things have changed at their brewery that now they don't feel they can adequately compete and have thus withdrawn to insure their past glory isn't tarnished. It is hard to say. It could be other factors as well. Again, as I said, I'd consider their lack of participation a problem and one that I'd look into if I was their marketing consultant.

Scott Jensen

That's nice to know.

It might however spur them to seek out better distributors and retailers. It might also spur these distributors and retailers to improve to keep these microbreweries as clients and providers.

A few points:

1) The smaller the business, the more important each customer is to them.

2) For the non-chain, non-supermarket liquor stores, the IHBC seal of approval would likely give them an edge over these mega-stores that they'll very likely view as a good way to be competitive with them. If the IHBC were to come about, I could easily see small IHBC-approved liquor stores heavily advertising this fact.

3) The mega-stores intensely monitor their sales. Sales fluctuations of even the smallest amounts are closely scrutinized as they should be. You want to catch trends at the start and not after it's too late. And this means both good and bad trends. For the good trends, you want to maximize the opportunity as much as you can.

Given the above...

If small liquor stores promoted their IHBC stamp of approval and a small fraction of beer consumers (the beer connoisseurs) were to change their purchasing habits because of this, the small liquor stores would see an important improvement in revenue and the mega-stores would notice an unwanted downward movement in sales. The mega-stores might then seek IHBC approval to hopefully regain those lost consumers as well as stop any further loss of them. The end result could be vastly improvement handling of all beers by distributors and small and mega stores.

This is why many businesses wisely hire mystery shopper services. The mystery shopper is someone unknown by the employees and thus catches them as they normally operate. The IHBC would need to use mystery shoppers. It would use mystery shoppers to go into the stores and purchase the beers for the contest. They would be "mystery" shoppers simply in the aspect that the store employees wouldn't know they're from IHBC. In fact, if I were to run this contest, I would definitely explore hiring mystery shopper services around the world to purchase the beers for the contests and then properly and promptly ship the beers to the judging location.

I can definitely see this for home-brewed beers. However, those are not the beers I'd want my beer contest to evaluate.

That's good to hear. And the contest would be relatively simple to set up. It just needs a backer for at least the initial years. Eventually, the contest could decide to support itself through charging stores for the privilege of being able to advertise that their store(s) are IHBC approved. No entry fee to brewers. In fact, by not depending on financial support from the brewers, the beer judged would be judged regardless if the brewer wanted their beer judged or not. The contest judging all beers and not just those willing and able to fork over the money to be judged. Personally, I think this independence from the brewers would further improve the creditability of the contest results.

Scott Jensen

Well, it strikes me as being arbitrary and not fitting with the supposed goal of finding the best beer available to consumers. But, hey, it's your contest. Go crazy.

Nope. I'm just saying I'm far from alone in that opinion.

Except that's not what I said. I preserved the original above. I said that I've had award-winning beers that are *no better* than similar beers. There's a difference between that and tasting the same.

OK, fine. You didn't say "absurd." But you've chosen to pick on that statement twice now as some sort of indicator that my opinion on that point is wrong and somehow calls into question my ability to have discerning taste when it comes to beer.

I'm capable of telling the difference between professional and formal communications, and personal and information communications. Usenet is neither professional nor formal. That's no excuse for bad use of the language. But typos do not constitute bad use of the language.

The little smiley face doesn't mitigate the fact that you're approaching asshole territory right here. I'm not questioning your professional acumen. I'd appreciate it if you'd extend me the same courtesy. I could go on and on about why the company's missing its sales targets, how it's unrelated to the particular marketing areas I'm involved in, etc. but it's irrelevant here. Other than to suggest that you stick to topic you actually have a basis to comment on.

It depends. If car is one of Car and Driver's 10 Best, yes, that's something that a consumer can take a lot of stock in. But, there are a lot of contests (and, to be pedantic, something like Car and Driver's awards and reviews aren't technically contests) that are bogus and not at all indicitive of quality.

Take the classic example of a restaurant advertising it's been recognized as having "the best burger in town." By whom? A lot of times the cites aren't even listed. Is it dumb for the restaurant to say that? No. Because most consumers aren't going to bother checking into it or even noticing that there's no indication of who said it was the best burger in town. Same thing goes with movie reviews: take a look at the citations on a lot of the glowing praise in movie ads, especially for movies of marginal quality. They're often from organizations that you've never heard of, from TV stations in Wichita and Indianapolis, etc.

Again, certain ratings, awards, etc. are important ones to have. Getting JD Power's top quality rating is huge, for instance. But, to speak in broad abstracts, awards are more important for raising visibility and recognition than as a mark of quality. Again, because most consumers will not do the homework to check into an award's veracity and pertinence. There are exceptions for well-known ones, like the examples I've cited.

If you're a marketing consultant (that's only part of my job, by the way), it's rather odd that you as a consumer don't recognize the shortcomings of awards.

No. It leads to the *perception* of that view. Subtle, but huge, difference.

Most certainly. The marketplace is littered with the lower-quality product having hte dominant market share. The Betamax/VHS example I cited earlier is a textbook example.

-Steve

Once again, it comes down to sales volume and market forces. Unfortunately, craftbrewing comprises only 3% of the US beer market (see

). I would expect to find most distributors and retailers not interested in spending a lot of time, energy, or money on what happens to the craftbrews, when they can more effectively spend time, energy, and money on the 86% that comprises the megaswill market segment.

Most liquor stores (even the small ones) still depend on the mainstream market to make the majority of their sales (see my first comment above). I don't know about where you live, but in Southeast Michigan, I don't find any stores that specialize in micrbrews ONLY.

However, the judging process is the same for both. All beers (homebrewed and commercial) are judged by:

A) how closely they meet style guidelines (does it taste like a Pale Ale, or more like an Amber Ale?), and B) are there any flaws in the beer (are there "bad" flavors that should not be there, and detract from the overall enjoyment of the beer?).

How would you have the beers judged? Unless you have a standard set of guidelines to measure the beers against (and a group of trained and experienced individuals to judge them), the contest would just devolve into a debate of "I like this one the best", without any solid rationale as to why.

Kevin

This is exactly what I saw as well. Brewers tweaking batches until they had one that they felt was contest worthy. I doubt this is an issue with the big boys' beer that comprises a large proportion of GABF entries, but is something the the micro guys do since they don't have the millions invested in consistency that BMC does.

--NPD

FWIW, same things goes for many homebrewers who regularly participate in competitions. You brew a kick-butt beer in a certain style, but tend to take a little extra care when specifically targeting competition.

-- Joel Plutchak | Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"I don't like beer. I tried it once and thought it was terrible." - Overheard at a restaurant

I agree with much of what you said. I'm not sure I put as much weight on the above, though. Craft breweries vary in their ability to brew a given beer recipe consistently. For example, I never got a lot of variation from the main beers of Anchor, Sierra Nevada, or Rogue, to name a few. (I've noted more variability among some smaller breweries.) The last sentence may be true of some of the breweries when preparing beer specifically for the GABF, but I don't think it's true for mostsmaller breweries most of the time-- they could care less what GABF (or BJCP) guidelines say.

-- Joel Plutchak | Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"I don't like beer. I tried it once and thought it was terrible." - Overheard at a restaurant

So you'd not only be judging the beers, but the distributors, and the retailers. I see as much problem with that as in the GABF method, which, though not perfect, at least attempts to judge the beer itself. To expand a bit, you'd potentially knock a good beer due to the bad actions of one distribution-retailer combination. I seriously doubt brewers would want to risk that.

-- Joel Plutchak | Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"I don't like beer. I tried it once and thought it was terrible." - Overheard at a restaurant

How many were shown on the show, and how many breweries enter the GABF? I've seen TV shows that grossly distort facts by showing only what they want to show. Just something to consider.

-- Joel Plutchak | Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"I don't like beer. I tried it once and thought it was terrible." - Overheard at a restaurant

Scott, no offense, but if all your info came from the TV show and it wasn't made clear that the GABF is a competition for commercial beers, you are basing all your discussion on a very narrow set of facts.

-- Joel Plutchak | Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"I don't like beer. I tried it once and thought it was terrible." - Overheard at a restaurant

I'm sorry. ;-)

I've been interviewed several times about beer, and beer competitions. The newspapers the resulting articles appeared in quoted me. Even ignoring misquotes and misattributed quotes (which is just a wee bit more difficult to do on television, I grant you), there were some large misrep- resentations and straight out unfactual things that got into those articles. The process has left me aware of how things can easily be made into something other than what they are.

-- Joel Plutchak | Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"I don't like beer. I tried it once and thought it was terrible." - Overheard at a restaurant

Yes, I agree it would be less valuable-- you'd be using a single data point using a random batch of a given beer with random (mis)handling of it. What does that tell a consumer, other than that that particular batch of beer bought at that particular shop at that particular point in time (beer does age) was rated as X by a particular panel of judges (average consumers with no given experience, I assume)? At the very best, it tells you exactly what the GABF tells you, except the beers may or may not be in decent shape, and barring a statistically significant sampling over time and location, gives no no clue as to whether you. personally, will like that beer where you personally by it.

-- Joel Plutchak | Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"I don't like beer. I tried it once and thought it was terrible." - Overheard at a restaurant

Ah, the ad hominem attack. That'll win him over. FWIW, I know Steve Jackson, I've drank beer with Steve Jackson. His tastebuds are fine. (FWIW, I've also argued with Steve Jackson, so it's not like I'm his best friend who would defend him in everything he does.)

And I'm a brewer and certified beer judge. That and $3.50 will get me a pint of beer at a Chicago brewpub.

-- Joel Plutchak | Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"I don't like beer. I tried it once and thought it was terrible." - Overheard at a restaurant

OK, here's where I call Steve a doo-doo head. Steve, you doo-doo head, no rational consumer (I know, I know) will accept a statement as patently absurb as "this is the best beer in the country because it was voted that way" as meaning "everyconsumer will like this beer." I'd go further than that for "consumer educated about the product and rating procedure" which includes many of us here. There's no such as as "best beer in the country" for any reasonable set of consumers.

-- Joel Plutchak | Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"I don't like beer. I tried it once and thought it was terrible." - Overheard at a restaurant

Same holds for most smaller regional breweries. Many places don't get Victory beer, or Bell's beer, or Three Floyd's beer, or Bridgeport's beer, etc. All are bottled. If you just want a competition between megabreweries and the handful of craft breweries that distribute nationally, that doesn't address, except in a very small part, what the average person in any given state or region can buy locally.

Experts are not, by definition, average consumers. To get the "average consumer" take, look up that Consumer Reports article from a couple years back. Fairly useless if you ask me.

Furrfu.

Ooooh, look spelling flames! That's certainly better than "the strawman route" as a method of discussion.

-- Joel Plutchak | Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"I don't like beer. I tried it once and thought it was terrible." - Overheard at a restaurant

That doesn't clash with the rules.

And the same would be true of your proposed competition, but you'd be adding purchase location into the mix. How does that help the "average consumer?"

Or maybe people who have experience with beer competitions know what they're doing, better than some average USENET poster.

-- Joel Plutchak | Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"I don't like beer. I tried it once and thought it was terrible." - Overheard at a restaurant

I should have qualified the statement by stating those brewpubs and microbreweries that _want_ to brew to style for the GABF. I would expect some not to care what the style guidelines say, but then they should not be surprised if they do not win, either. I agree with you too, that some micros can brew consistently from batch to batch--I was probably generalizing too much.

Kevin