Do beers awards influence your purchasing?

As regards the wine business and awards, there is often never a reference to vintage on point of sale materials once an award has been given. Bottle neckers and shelf talkers proclaim, say, 98 points from The Cloverdale Fair year after year, meaning nothing. Beer is not as much dependent on weather and agricultural dynamics as wine, but the misleading marketing tactics are often. similar

 

When I see advertising of a "Gold Medal", etc., for a beer it usually states the year.

The shelf-talkers, though, are for all time.

 

The wine business in general is the worst offender of perennial prize promotion. The funniest ones years ago were the Barefoot Wine ad materials. It was like the displays and bottles were bedecked with some type of industry bling.

 

Budweiser got an award. All you need to know about that.

 

That shouldn't surprise you. Nor does it invalidate the competition. The judging of many of these competitions is by style guidelines, not by beer-geek definitions of goodness.

 

A medal at GABF from a brewery in my area puts them on my radar if I’ve never even heard of them beforehand. A medal makes me revisit them if I am not a (semi)regular. And a medal makes me keep an eye out for their winning beer if it’s one I haven’t had. So, yes!

 

clearly the best wines

 

NO

 

It's a no from me... I couldn't tell you who won what, when and where....

 

Nope, not at all. I'd go more on friends recommendations or , if someone that I had never tryed before had a new offering and it was in a style I like I'd try that.

Tooooo many times I hear about award winners that seemed blahhhh when others have brought them over or at bottle shares.

 

Not for me they dont. I buy my beer based on can art

 

Anything is better than Milwaukee's Best. I drank my fair share of that swill in my younger days. I called it "Milwaukee's Worst"!

 

25 years ago it may have influenced me but today, not even in the slightest. I certainly respect the judges opinions in these awards but its too small of a sampling size. With 8,000+ US breweries now most styles are seeing a small fraction of the potential beers out there. There is probably more value in the awards for beers that are in an underrepresented style but we have enough information at our disposal today that an award is probably the least useful data point.

Beyond that the awards are generally based on faithfulness to style. This is a great tool to use for judging a beer fairly but we don't always enjoy a beer simply because its faithful to its style. We have so much information at our disposal an award just isn't that useful.

 

No. I look for styles I like or haven't tried, beer from brewers I like that I haven't tried and styles that I haven't tried. I don't much pay attention to medals or ribbons.

 

Hell no! Just like I'm not watching a movie solely because it won an Oscar, I don't base beer purchases on a competition. I do use BA ratings and reviews to influence purchases, and I find that to be more aligned with selecting things I enjoy.

 

BeerAdvocate reviews, ratings, and Top Rated lists... A competition by another name.

 

Sure. I trust beer judges more than randoms even if the competition setup isn't perfect. At least it's transparent.
If it's a style I enjoy and a brewery won a medal for it at GABF, WBC, or even one of the more competitive state fairs - I'm more likely to seek it out or order it.