Medals, Shmedals

Intro The Great American Beer Festival (GABF) is the premier beer festival and awards competition in the United States, possibly the world. Breweries and brewers display their wins proudly and for good reason, especially with the explosion in the number of breweries, entrants, and the subsequent competition in recent years. The GABF is no fringe occasion as it may have been from 1983-86, when just three places were awarded in a sole category, compared to the 288 award winners across 90+ categories in 2016.1 Despite the... [Read More]

I told myself that I was done going over the disparity in numbers between the US and rest of the world with respect to the World Beer Cup. While what I wrote earlier was certainly not the definitive say on the matter, and nor was it meant to be, I thought I’d made my point. Until last week, when the WBC results made it for me by giving the US its largest metal haul ever, both in absolute and relative numbers. Based on previous entry and... [Read More]

Being such a the most prestigious beer competition™ one could be forgiven for expecting breweries to want to gain a World Beer Cup medal. As a light draws mosquitoes so would the wBC draw beers, to my thinking. With that idea in mind I was inspired by various questions1 to take a look at visualizing and summarizing the competitions through the years. I had several expectations going in: Died-off categories would represent general brewery/industry neglect (Non-Alcoholic Malt Tonic), historical... [Read More]

The WBC is next week! If you’re like me those acronyms actually bring boxing to mind more so than beer. However, let’s not get stuck on putrid sanctioning bodies and “alleged” corruption in a brutal and beautiful sport. Instead, we’ll swig (Freud!), eh swing, our attention back to our regularly programmed topic. Similarly to boxing, however, we will be talking about competition: beer competition. The WBC is the World Beer Cup or what I am starting to consider the “World” Beer Cup (wBC), the... [Read More]