The Bar Towel

Here's a list of the award winners

http://www.greatcanadianbeerblog.com/20 ... nners.html

I'm going through the list and I kind of wonder: how seriously should we take these awards?

Buzz Beer winning a gold medal for amber lager? some other strange beer awards as well.

and does it really count when there are some interesting absentees, like Dieu du Ciel and Les Trois Mouskatiers?

atomeyes wrote:Here's a list of the award winners

http://www.greatcanadianbeerblog.com/20 ... nners.html

I'm going through the list and I kind of wonder: how seriously should we take these awards?

Buzz Beer winning a gold medal for amber lager? some other strange beer awards as well.

and does it really count when there are some interesting absentees, like Dieu du Ciel and Les Trois Mouskatiers?

I've always wondered why DDC seems to almost always be absent.

Having said that this list doesn't seem too bad to me...Yeah, Buzz and Moosehead Lime are pretty strange to have here, but most other beers seem to be pretty solid to me...not that I've tried everything here.

What I want to know is how is there no Gold for the Hefeweizen category?

JeffPorter wrote:What I want to know is how is there no Gold for the Hefeweizen category?

if they are following BJCP guidelines (they claim BJCP judges, but the styles are sort of all over the map), I believe there are point cutoffs for medals. It would basically indicate that the silver medal winner was the best of the bunch but didn't score high enough to deserve gold. kind of a laughable distinction in this competition when you see some of the awards...

i think the thread from last year's competition would state about the same thing. some of the categories are a definite joke, but others are legitimate. do you discount the "good" awards just because of the 15 different lager categories full of mediocrity? hard to say...

my biggest question (which i couldn't find answered anywhere on the CBA website or when I asked them directly on twitter) was how the decision is made for brewery of the year. generally if you're doing things BJCP style, brewer of the year is whoever gets the most medals, but that definitely isn't the case here (at first glance, great lakes had more medals overall at least as many medals of each type central city).

JeffPorter wrote:

atomeyes wrote:Here's a list of the award winners

http://www.greatcanadianbeerblog.com/20 ... nners.html

I'm going through the list and I kind of wonder: how seriously should we take these awards?

Buzz Beer winning a gold medal for amber lager? some other strange beer awards as well.

and does it really count when there are some interesting absentees, like Dieu du Ciel and Les Trois Mouskatiers?

I've always wondered why DDC seems to almost always be absent.

these awards usually cost a brewery a fair bit to enter. So I assume lots dont, because medals are kind of pointless.

And the longstanding point of "Did my favorite beer lose out, or just not enter?"

Congrats to the winners for being acknowledged. More importantly, who has some Sawdust City Monkey beer for me?

grub wrote:

JeffPorter wrote:What I want to know is how is there no Gold for the Hefeweizen category?

if they are following BJCP guidelines (they claim BJCP judges, but the styles are sort of all over the map), I believe there are point cutoffs for medals. It would basically indicate that the silver medal winner was the best of the bunch but didn't score high enough to deserve gold. kind of a laughable distinction in this competition when you see some of the awards...

There are no BJCP competition guidelines that suggest this whatsoever. CBAs did this last year as well (I think in the IPA category), I have no idea why they do this. The best beer entered should be awarded gold. End of story.

grub wrote:my biggest question (which i couldn't find answered anywhere on the CBA website or when I asked them directly on twitter) was how the decision is made for brewery of the year. generally if you're doing things BJCP style, brewer of the year is whoever gets the most medals, but that definitely isn't the case here (at first glance, great lakes had more medals overall at least as many medals of each type central city).

When entering, each brewery can select 4 of their beers to "represent" themselves for consideration for the award. Based on the placement of those beers (5 points for gold, 3 for silver, and 1 for bronze or something like that), the brewery with the highest number of points gets it. This is how it was explained at the awards ceremony. And as I understand it, Great Lakes was 1 point behind Central City.

kona wrote:

grub wrote:my biggest question (which i couldn't find answered anywhere on the CBA website or when I asked them directly on twitter) was how the decision is made for brewery of the year. generally if you're doing things BJCP style, brewer of the year is whoever gets the most medals, but that definitely isn't the case here (at first glance, great lakes had more medals overall at least as many medals of each type central city).

When entering, each brewery can select 4 of their beers to "represent" themselves for consideration for the award. Based on the placement of those beers (5 points for gold, 3 for silver, and 1 for bronze or something like that), the brewery with the highest number of points gets it. This is how it was explained at the awards ceremony. And as I understand it, Great Lakes was 1 point behind Central City.

Kona has the rules right. I believe that it's designed to prevent a brewery from winning by simply submitting the most beers.

markaberrant wrote:There are no BJCP competition guidelines that suggest this whatsoever. CBAs did this last year as well (I think in the IPA category), I have no idea why they do this. The best beer entered should be awarded gold. End of story.

hmm, maybe i'm remembering it backwards or something then? i know i've seen bjcp comps where they didn't award all 3 medals. perhaps it was the bronze missing due to lack of entries or some such rather than being points-based?

saints_gambit wrote:

kona wrote:When entering, each brewery can select 4 of their beers to "represent" themselves for consideration for the award. Based on the placement of those beers (5 points for gold, 3 for silver, and 1 for bronze or something like that), the brewery with the highest number of points gets it. This is how it was explained at the awards ceremony. And as I understand it, Great Lakes was 1 point behind Central City.

Kona has the rules right. I believe that it's designed to prevent a brewery from winning by simply submitting the most beers.

ah, interesting. simply "entering the most beers" wouldn't guarantee you a win - they'd still need to be good enough to medal. but i guess that does make sense to level the field somewhat for breweries that don't just happen to make something that fits every "style" well.

grub wrote:

saints_gambit wrote:

kona wrote:When entering, each brewery can select 4 of their beers to "represent" themselves for consideration for the award. Based on the placement of those beers (5 points for gold, 3 for silver, and 1 for bronze or something like that), the brewery with the highest number of points gets it. This is how it was explained at the awards ceremony. And as I understand it, Great Lakes was 1 point behind Central City.

Kona has the rules right. I believe that it's designed to prevent a brewery from winning by simply submitting the most beers.

ah, interesting. simply "entering the most beers" wouldn't guarantee you a win - they'd still need to be good enough to medal. but i guess that does make sense to level the field somewhat for breweries that don't just happen to make something that fits every "style" well.

A fair point, but consider Picaroon's who won last year. They don't make enough styles of beer to compete with someone like Mill Street who routinely acquire a number of medals in a number of different categories.

grub wrote:hmm, maybe i'm remembering it backwards or something then? i know i've seen bjcp comps where they didn't award all 3 medals. perhaps it was the bronze missing due to lack of entries or some such rather than being points-based?

Yes, sometimes medals are not awarded due to not enough entries or not meeting a minimum score (ie; 30). This is done at the discretion of the competition organizers, and typically it is the lowest medal that is witheld (ie; bronze).

The BJCP guidelines say the top beers in the category should be awarded gold, silver, bronze. However, the guidelines also state you can do whatever the hell you want. So technically, they don't have to award a gold medal, I'm just saying the BJCP certainly doesn't recommend this, but I also can't think of any other competition that does this.

saints_gambit wrote:A fair point, but consider Picaroon's who won last year. They don't make enough styles of beer to compete with someone like Mill Street who routinely acquire a number of medals in a number of different categories.

exactly the point i made in my last sentence. it levels the field for those who don't have 15 beers to submit.

grub wrote:

saints_gambit wrote:A fair point, but consider Picaroon's who won last year. They don't make enough styles of beer to compete with someone like Mill Street who routinely acquire a number of medals in a number of different categories.

exactly the point i made in my last sentence. it levels the field for those who don't have 15 beers to submit.

Right you are. I seem to have been preaching to the death metal choir.

saints_gambit wrote:Right you are. I seem to have been preaching to the death metal choir.

\m/

It's a somewhat interesting point though. I suspect the idea was to level the field, but it does end up penalizing breweries with a wider portfolio. If you make 15 beers that are all good enough to earn a bronze medal, the most you could rack up is 4 points. someone who makes only one beer that is worthy of a medal, and it happens to get a gold, would beat you out as brewery of the year. Is that right? Having the points go 5/3/1 rather than 3/2/1 will definitely skew things slightly toward those who get the better medals, but the system still feels flawed.

consider the case where BreweryA scores a gold for their light lager and their other 15 brands are terrible and never medal (total score 5). BreweryB has a very diverse portfolio and scores a bronze in all 39 category across the board, but is maxed out at 4 points. who is more deserving of brewery of the year? what about BreweryC that only makes exactly one beer - the most awesome RIS every conceived, deservedly gets a gold medal and perhaps even beer of the year... should they beat out either of the others above? I'd think part of what makes you a "brewery of the year" is a diverse and well executed portfolio.

I'm partly playing devil's advocate here, but I'm genuinely curious. I think I'd side with BreweryB in my examples above, but it gets more grey when you consider things like does having 4 gold-medal beers make you more deserving of BotY than having 20 bronze medal beers?