Do you care about beer awards?

This is the GABF's "Award Criteria":

GOLD - A world-class beer that accurately exemplifies the specified style, displaying the proper balance of taste, aroma and appearance.

SILVER - An excellent beer that may vary slightly from style parameters while maintaining close adherence to the style and displaying excellent taste, aroma and appearance.

BRONZE - A fine example of the style that may vary slightly from style parameters and/or have minor deviations in taste, aroma or appearance.


Maybe the above sounds meaningful to some, but I honestly can't find anything meaningful in how it would be applied. The style parameter content is nonsense, and then all that's left is gold=world-class, silver=excellent, bronze=fine... which is like stating that the criteria is that second place goes to our second-favorite and third place goes to our third-favorite.

Unless there are legal reasons why the above needs to exist, I don't think beer awards need to have black and white criteria (and no offense is meant to any winners). I will award a gold medal to anybody that can convince me that there is anything actually meaningful in the above.

 

No.

Breweries that are established and successful have nothing to gain by entering, so they don’t. Up and coming breweries have everything to gain, so they are competing with each other.

Also, you are not getting the beer in the best condition, so sometimes it isn’t the best beer that wins, but the beer that travels the best.

The only exception is things like FoBAB and other style specific competitions where the big boys (aka established breweries) get pulled in.

 

I like to see Brewers, breweries and beers I know win and other locals I may not have tried or been fair to if I've only tried 1 or 2 of theirs. But winners from far off that I'll likely never see in my area I scroll past on the awards list. Always happy for any brewery to win an award especially at WBC where there are more bragging rights imo. My favorite local got screwed this year as all their entries were destroyed in shipping at $200 per entry.

 

And some of those successful and established breweries got established and successful by creating styles that didn’t exist or did not fit into style guidelines at the time thus they wouldn’t have won.

 

I enjoy looking at the list to see if I've had any of the beers and to see which ones came from my state.

 

I only measure beers against other beers by their height.

 

The height of beer in your glass isn’t a terrible indicator of appreciation.

 

No, I don’t care, years ago I was a little interested, but I was familiar with most breweries in the competition. Now, with several thousand breweries out there, it’s impossible for me to keep up, even with the ones that are fairly local to me.

 

I do not. Some award winning beer I feel is shit. Some shit I feel should win an award... if that makes sense.

 

I enjoy reading over the winners, looking to see if any winners are local, or available to me, in the categories I enjoy consuming.
Usually not many.
I do however take pride in drinking a beer that I thoroughly enjoy that has won many awards.
Great Lakes comes to mind, although there are a few I'm sure.

 

I peruse the awards and if available I will purchase the winners.

 

I glance at them. I take more interest in certain categories than others, check to see what I’ve tried, what interests me, and sometimes scratch my head.

 

Love this!

 

Having said this, I do take into consideration if a beer has made it through the judging to pick up an award for the reasons mentioned by @unlikelyspiderperson and @Orca

 

i mean as long as its "first second third" there is no distinction. If they want to reward multiples and zeroes then that definition means something.

 

To me its a mixed bag because a lot of quality brewers (breweries) don't submit their beers to be judged and on the other hand there are more than a few breweries that pad their ratings on here and/or every other site similar to BA to trick (? or whatever) people into buying their product.

 

Let alone its size, combined with the very long presence it has had in fostering the industry.

 

I pay close attention to my State awards, Texas Brewers Guild specifically. Out of state I'll still browse the winners especially if I know a # of Texas breweries have entered. I love Texas get over my biased upbringing.

I like to see if iv ticked ranked beers. Get a chance to notice other breweries I haven't had or know about so I can keep a eye out.

Iv found new beers doing this. It's fun to me. And I love seeing my favorite breweries win. All the breweries deserve attention they work hard at thier craft.

 

Not particularly, but I appreciate knowing when a brewer has won awards, so…‍♂️