2017 FOBAB

I liked HBM w/vanilla but the vanilla tasted very artificial to me.

 

I didn't go to FoBaB this year, so am not passing judgment on BA Karma, but I will say that I'm frequently interested in/confused by the best in show.

Then again, when I imagine myself tasting all these different beers, I'm not sure I'd be able to pick one out of a lineup, either.

 

I'm curious how they score - is it an overall score or a weighted score. Naively, I feel like I would be able to give an overall impression (and more likely to come out with a winner) than if I rated everything by categories and weighted. I feel like an overall score would better measure my "happy meter," than breaking it down.

(I understand the seemingly oxy-moron type of argument I made. They should be the same. I've re-written this 5 times and I cannot explain this cogently. It seems hard to potentially not "top out" in a category. I can imagine a beer giving me that "wow" factor that should make it the winner to me, but once I break it down, it could be tied in all but one category with another beer that on paper had just as good of scores in all except one- and a hair better in say mouthfeel. But, it didn't have that X-factor. So, when breaking them down the non X-factor beer wins, even though the Wow-beer to me should be the winner. Does that make any sense? I guess this is why there are professionals, that have some type of experience with judging so they know how to not "top out," and how to accurately record scores for beers that wow them without giving them a perfect score in some categories?)

 

That's why my best in show would've been Arclight's, it blew everyone in our group away

 

I have never had a beer from More. I avoided the line when I got to the Saturday IMBIBE session. Once the line died down, I figured why not, I will give it a shot. More Karma definitely stood out as the best beer I tried on Saturday. Extremely well balanced with all of the different flavors and the barrel. Job well done.

 

This is not a criticism of Listermann, however, they have had carbonation issues in the past. They actually released a beer that was uncarbonated and said that it was intended to be that way, so maybe that was their target? Hard to say, but I was surprised they won BIS and runner up this year.

 

Considering they have been awarded things 3 years in a row at Fobab for Chickow stuff, I'm not all that surprised.

 

Maybe I am just lucky to live 5 miles from them, but last time I was there, I passed up pours of this beer to have their pale ale, skipped out on bottle release, etc.

I just enjoyed a lot of the other beers I had on Saturday moreso than Chickow! Including the Blue Hawaii from Quaff On.

 

That was my surprise find of the fest. Poured it on Friday and kept trying to sell people on it. Once they tried it, everyone loved it/came back for more.

Didn’t kick on Friday but it did on Saturday, so it’s good to see the word got out.

 

I think everyone needs to remember that competition winners are not based on rarity or insane lists of ingredients or even necessarily uniqueness.

Many breweries likely sent stuff they thought could medal in its respective category and weren't even trying to wow the crowd with whales. That's actually not at all the point of FOBAB, though the very nature of the event always means there will be at least a few whales or hyped beers showing up.

Each beer is likely judged on its own against the style listing/category. I'm not a judge so can't be sure but medals per category might be based on points alone or only at the final round compared against each other. BOS could potentially go either way as well. Plus it's supposedly all judged blindly so the judges aren't trying to award rarity or familiarity. This is actually precisely why there will always be some unknowns mixed in with the more popular breweries on the podium.

I had a ton of amazing beers that neither medaled nor have been mentioned yet in this thread. When judged blindly some crowd favorites may have been toward the bottom of the heap for all we know.

 

I was about 10th-15th in GA line on Friday night and I walked straight to More for my first beer. There was a sold out sign up and I even asked the guy for a pour (just in case) and was told it was gone. This was 2 minutes into opening for general admission, so if there was some for GA it came out after that which is BS.

 

Hey guys, I was one of the competition coordinators again this year for FoBAB. I'll kind of explain the process so you can see behind the curtain.

First, when we're assembling invitations for breweries, they typically do want to impress the crowds. Winning a medal is great (and often they can go hand in hand), but giving you guys fun stuff to try is typically their MO. This year we limited breweries to 2 entries and increased the number of breweries. This had a couple of effects, some positive, some neutral. But anyway, yeah.

As to the competition, you have to remember that the judges are tasting things side by side and looking for particular characteristics in each of the styles. Balance is important, as is barrel expression and support. In order to medal in smaller categories, the beers first have to pass through the initial judging (typically a flight of ~7-8 beers) and make it out. The panels for that round were 3-4. After this, the beers would then be judged by an entirely different panel of 4 judges from a different category to eliminate proximity bias. In the larger categories, there was even a third panel between to further whittle down. This would mean that 7-11 people would have judged each beer that medalled, in context. In addition, for best of show, the panel of 4 did not judge any of the medal rounds, again to minimize any potential proximity bias. Judging, obviously, is imperfect, but context changes things quite a bit. I don't agree with all of the medals on a case by case basis; however I do think that the beers that medalled were worthy in the context of a competition. Hope that helps with the understanding!

 

anyone still have the booklet? would really appreciate pictures of the beer list since i cant seem to find it online...tia!

 

Someone made an app. First download appsheets, then download fobab 2017 unofficial.

 

anyone have a link for the brochure or know where to find a complete list of beers poured? i lost my book