'17 NW GABF medal winners

Really impressed to see Goodlife take gold for their sweet as pacific ale. Who knew sweet as was a wheat beer?

 

This from Paulypringles over in the GN thread:

"We unfortunately are headed out of town for GABF for the next few days, but would love to hear what you think and also meet you if you stop in today or one day next week when we're back.

I'm assuming that if they attended GABF, it probably wasn't just to see the sights and rub elbows with the crowd.

"I know that a bunch of WA breweries drop their beer at Fremont, and share the shipping costs, whether that be loading it onto a common carriers truck, or one brewery donating the use of a vehicle. That mitigates the cost, at least to a certain degree."

Sierra Nevada always used to do the same thing. It was really the only way a lot of the smaller breweries in California could attend and enter the competition in the past.

I haven't checked the statistical data this year, but in the past, California and Colorado always garnered the most medals at the GABF, typically followed by Pa., Michigan, NY or one of the NW states. The fact that the competition is held in Colorado clearly makes a big difference in terms of accessibility, as does the number of breweries making beer in a particular state.

 

All very true and you make good points, but when I wished them good luck at the GABF, they seemed to appreciate the "well wishes." Still doesn't mean that they necessarily entered the competition, but given their response, that was the assumption I made.

Your other comments are likely right on the mark. There literally is zero benefit in a brewery like Russian River, HF or Trillium entering their beer into the GABF, unless they simply want to do it out of a sense of pride. If memory serves, there's a not insignificant cost in attending/entering the GABF competition, and the organizers don't pay attendees for the beer that's brought. So with that in mind, what possible upside would there for a brewery like HF to bring some kegs of Edward and Ephraim to the GABF, when they can barely keep up with the demand for those beers as it is? Even if everything took a gold medal, I can't really see how that would benefit them in any way.

 

So true.

Quick story. I attended the GABF for the second time in 1994, and along with the actual grand tasting event, I made reservations to go visit several local breweries during our stay. I can't remember why (location/convenience might have been a factor), but one of the breweries we went to visit was a small, new to the brewing scene place called Left Hand Brewing. I think our reservation was at 10:00, and we were a bit surprised when no one was around when we got to the brewery. After about 5 or 10 minutes, one of the partners showed up. He told us he had completely forgotten about our reservation (he was very apologetic about this), and in fact had just stopped by the brewery to pick up some beer for a tasting that evening. Anyway, he showed us around and we talked about the GABF competition. Left Hand had entered 4 beers into the competition that year, two of which medaled while another took honorable mention. Back in 94, that kind of success was a HUGE big deal, and in fact was apparently part of the reason the partners had forgotten about our reservation. Apparently, they had been inundated with requests for beer from various local, regional and national distributors after the competition, and after that both partners had spent the evening into the wee hours over at the Denver Rock Bottom drinking glass after glass of 25 year old single malt. At least back then, that kind of success was akin to winning the lottery, and almost as valuable from a financial standpoint.

I expect success stories like that are another reason why small breweries want to enter their beers into the competition if they can (though obviously, a lot has changed since 1994, and I don't know how realistic it would be for a small brewery to have the kind of success today, or even if that level of success would have the same sort of lucrative result).

 

Just a couple of thoughts and observations.

My understanding is that the judges are provided guidelines on what to look for, depending on the style of beer they're judging. Entries that don't meet the minimum specifications of the style are rejected out of hand. For example, I was surprised to learn some years ago that one of the things the judges look for in the AAL category was the amount of flavor found in the beer. I kid you not, beers with what was perceived as an excessive amount of flavor were rejected out of hand. In the case of the IPA/DIPA category, I'm not sure what the judges are looking for, but it could be that beers with an excessive amount of haze or lack of bitterness are rejected out of hand. That would make it pretty hard for GN to receive any medals for their APA's or IPA's.

As for Colorado and California dominating the medal counts, I think that's the result of the number of entries made by Colorado and California brewers. At least in the past, both states had far more entries than any other state in the country. Maybe I'm over simplifying things, but it just seemed logical that an increased number of entries would result in an increased number of medals.