2018 GABF NW winners

Really nice to see pFriem snag Best Midsize Brewing Company of the Year on top of a Gold for Druif and another Silver for their excellent Pilsner. Well deserved.

Kind of a shame to see personal favorites like Breakside, Barley Brown's, and Block 15 come home without medals, but it's not like that will stop me from enjoying their beers.

 

Seems like you only noted the (smaller list of) Washington medals.

I thought it was impressive that Alesong grabbed 2 out of the 3 medals in the Brett Beer category.

 

10 Barrel entered 3 beers and got 3 medals. Baywindow Berlinerweisse triple crown-ed it, with golds at WBC, NABA, and GABF this year.

Congrats also to Three Creeks, Sunriver, GoodLife, and Worthy. Central Oregon out-medaled Portland.

 

Steve Luke provided the best moment.

 

Congratulations to our homies at Chuckanut for continuing to add pelts to the wall.

 

do we know if they even entered any beers to the competition?

GABF medals are nice, but even an event of that size probably captures 1/1000th of the overall beer scene

 

Not sure about Block 15, but Breakside and Barley Browns did. This competition is massive, and getting skunked once in a while is not an indicator that their beer has decreased in quality in any way. Each competition is a snapshot, and looking at multiple snapshots over years gives a good approximation of performance, but still has many caveats.

[philosophical meandering] I may be slitting my own throat as a competition organizer, but it's important to note that competitions are not comprehensive or perfectly definitive. There's no practical way to evaluate every brewery's entire portfolio over time to make any claim that a beer/brewery is "the best" overall; such a thing doesn't exist as long as we have individual palates. GABF, BoCBA, heck even the Paste magazine lists are attempts to adapt a scientific method for evaluating as large a sample as practical and mitigate the inherent limitations in ranking subjective sensory factors like taste, smell, and appearance. It's nowhere near perfect, but we're trying to get as close to that impossible ideal as we can.[/philosophical meandering]

 

Ultimately, GABF is a "best of" list, nothing more. And I've never run across a "best of" list that didn't generate controversy. Look at any "10 best guitarists" list. Hell, look at the Oscars.

Yes, medals are nice to win. Who wouldn't want to be recognized by their peers as being among the best brewers in one of the best beer-brewing countries in the world?

But when it comes down to my palate and my money, the only "Best Of" list that matters is the one in my head.

 

I will say that when a simple, non-adjunct style (think german pils, lager, etc.) gets a GABF gold, i feel fairly confident that its really good.

some of their other categories seem much more subjective and I take the medal with a grain of salt

 

Two thoughts...I was surprised to see no medals from Alaska this year...and nice to see Alaskan Smoked Porter mentioned, great beer. I don’t cellar beer, but I have a couple bottles of the 2011, the year my daughter was born.

 

I'm not sure how Alesong's Terroir: Pinot Gris is considered Brett Beer while Terroir: Pinot Noir is considered Experimental Beer. I don't know what exactly makes a beer experimental, but the bronze went to "Chips & Salsa Cream Ale" which is more of what I was expecting.