GABF and World Beer Cup lag time

[George de Piro]

Hi all, I'm wondering how many others share my frustration with the long gap between when entrants must be received and when they are judged at the GABF and WBC. This year's WBC entrants need to arrive the first week of March but the judging isn't until the first week of May! The winners are the best of the stale beers? Full disclosure: I've won awards at both contests, so I'm not a disgruntled whiner, just a brewer concerned about quality (who may also whine occasionally).

[d_striker]

What's more is that I heard from a fairly credible source that many of the entries are not kept in refrigerated storage.

[Junkyard]

Enter Brett aged beers I guess

But yes I agree it is redonk

[WWSean]

Yes that is a long time and yes they most likely aren't kept cold but it won't affect your beer as much as you think. If the beer is good quality then it will hold up fine.

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[d_striker]

Yes that is a long time and yes they most likely aren't kept cold but it won't affect your beer as much as you think. If the beer is good quality then it will hold up fine.

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Take two bottles of your IPA. Leave one out at room temp and one refrigerated for 2 months. Taste and get back to us.

[WWSean]

Take two bottles of your IPA. Leave one out at room temp and one refrigerated for 2 months. Taste and get back to us.

Yes I agree but it's not like your beer is warm and the rest is cold. They are all warm. So everyone is evenly screwed

[StonyCreekAndy]

WBC reply regarding timing

I actually emailed them about this. Below was their response.

I’m so sorry for the delay. We strive to maintain the highest integrity in all of our competitions and the World Beer Cup in particular since it doesn’t always take place in Colorado. Trying to make sure your beer is judged at its optimal flavor is what we always strive for, but there are many variables to hosting the world’s largest commercial beer competition. Let me go through the process so you have a better understanding.

Once your beer arrives at the warehouse in Denver, it is taken to the cooler and remains there until it is transferred to the competition site. It takes our team just over a month to sort and inventory the thousands of beers into the 96 different style categories. The beers are kept cool from receipt until they are loaded onto a refrigerated semi and shipped to the competition site. They remain on the reefer trucks until the day each category is judged when it is transferred to the staging room. Having the beers sorted and arranged in a specific order is what allows us to judge that many beers in three days.

We have to do the sorting part of the competition in Colorado as that’s where all of our resources and staffing are. Hopefully, that helps ease some worries and provides more insight into how your beer is handled throughout the competition. Please let me know if you have any additional questions or comments.

[d_striker]

Yes I agree but it's not like your beer is warm and the rest is cold. They are all warm. So everyone is evenly screwed

Wrong again.

I would be less concerned about WBC since it's not as hot in their warehouse though.

During GABF dropoff, it's pretty hot.

[George de Piro]

It seems to me that BA needs to increase the number of staff sorting the beers to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. Extending the gap between the entry deadline and the judging is not serving entrants well. They charge a LOT of money to enter these events, they should be able to make changes to ensure beer quality.

[mkunce]

Re

My biggest concern regarding these 'pay for your award' events is the lag time between buying into one of these medals and profit increases at my brewery. There is not one empirical study showing any medal=profits relationship. Many folks share anecdotes, I want evidence and the BA has the data for such studies. As much as the BA touts these medal events (they are their largest revenue sources) you would think they would foster such an analysis.

[George de Piro]

My biggest concern regarding these 'pay for your award' events is the lag time between buying into one of these medals and profit increases at my brewery. There is not one empirical study showing any medal=profits relationship. Many folks share anecdotes, I want evidence and the BA has the data for such studies. As much as the BA touts these medal events (they are their largest revenue sources) you would think they would foster such an analysis.

The GABF and WBC are most certainly not contests where one buys an award! While there are certainly some issues with these events, dishonesty is not one of them. I've judged at the GABF and won awards at both GABF and WBC and can assure you I've not seen any dishonesty.

Furthermore, these are not events where everybody gets a medal. Three medals per category, gold, silver and bronze, max. Sometimes medals aren't awarded because no beer in the group merited one.

These are the only two contests I ever enter because they have integrity. Unfortunately, I may not enter either again given the way the lag time between entry and judging is growing each year. I'm not interested in whose beer tastes best when stale.

As to your other point, does a medal help your sales? I can tell you it certainly did at one brewpub I worked at. My brown ale was a GABF medal winner and it became the biggest seller there, even outselling pale ale and blonde. On the other hand, that was over a while ago. I think there are so many (mostly bogus) awards out there now that the general public has become numb to the phrase, "award-winning beer." How can we expect Joe Public top understand the difference between contests when some people in the industry get confused about which ones have integrity?

[mkunce]

Re

Breweries certainly do pay for these medals. The total opportunity costs (which includes your stale beer cost) to enter these events are substantial. Most of the larger breweries ‘donate’ hefty sums to the BA for key floor locations and access. Next time you are in CO, visit the BA offices in Boulder and judge for yourself.

The BA has the data to do the studies I mention, perhaps they are not being considered for fear of the potential results.

[redlodgesam]

I have only entered GABF and won a few medals (I wish we could win more). It is darn hard to win medals at GABF given the sheer volume of entries. There is an element of crap shoot with so many entries.

I appreciate the feed back on our beers, especially when we enter year in and year out. When we weed out the outlier judge comments, it gives you a good outline to improve your beers.

I do share the concerns about lag time. It definitely gives an advantage to the bigger breweries with expensive bottling lines versus our old long-tube rotary filler. What gets me is the BA relies on volunteers (or so I have been told) to sort the beers which contributes to the long lag between entry and judging. With an event that seemingly takes in so much money, you would think they could hire people to make the inventory and sorting process quicker.

my 2 cents

sam

[redlodgesam]

I also agree, the medals are of limited marketing value. I see the competition as a way to have hopefully professional judges let you know how your beer stacks up against other beers nation wide.

We also enter a more regional competition yearly and are disappointed when we win less than 3 medals. There are about a quarter the entries as GABF.

The regional medals look just as nice as the GABF medals on the tap room wall and 90+% of the public don't know the difference.

2 more cents

Sam

[George de Piro]

Breweries certainly do pay for these medals. The total opportunity costs (which includes your stale beer cost) to enter these events are substantial. Most of the larger breweries ‘donate’ hefty sums to the BA for key floor locations and access. Next time you are in CO, visit the BA offices in Boulder and judge for yourself.

The BA has the data to do the studies I mention, perhaps they are not being considered for fear of the potential results.

Yes, it costs money to enter these events, but that doesn't mean you are buying an award! It's called an "entry fee," not a "guaranteed medal bribe." Having judged there I can tell you that bribery doesn't play a part. Paying money for "key floor space" has no bearing on the contest whatsoever. The judging is separate from the festival; the judges aren't out on the festival floor! The contest itself is run very much like a homebrew contest, except that all beers in a flight are presented at once and the judges never even see the containers.