Despite the Name, GABF is a Local Competition (and Other GABF Hot Takes)
The Great American Beer Festival commences for the 42st time this week. It will culminate in an awards ceremony in which ~300 medals will be handed out for categories that include everything from hazy IPAs to pilsner. Some of the categories are abstruse to the extreme (category 24, American Belgo-style beer, category 33, fruited wood- and barrel-aged sour beer) to the weirdly specific (category 6, chili beer) to the blandly generic (category 20, specialty beer). By next Monday, my email inbox will be stuffed with breweries touting wins, and bloggers across the country—possibly including me—will have posts about the winners.
After all these decades, we might wonder why we should care about an awards competition in which only 22% of American breweries even compete—fewer in places like New England. There are a lot of good breweries in the US, and half the awards will be won by a brewery we’ve never even heard of, much less hope to visit. Well, I have a hot alternate take for you on this fine Wednesday before the GABF. The value of competitions waxes and wanes, and we are in a moment when they may be more valuable than they’ve been in years.
The Awards Are Local
Paradoxically, the more breweries there are in the country, the less nationalized brewing becomes. At the turn of the century, beer fans could expect to find quite a bit of out-of-state beer at their local retailer. We once got Allagash and New Glarus here, but now I’m lucky to find beer from Washington state on shelves. In fact, there are so many breweries in each state, drinkers have a hard time keeping up with breweries from two towns over, never mind two states. So of course we don’t care if Hoppin’ Woodpecker Brewing of [distant state] wins a silver medal in honey beer (category 13).
That doesn’t mean the medals have lost their value. Drinkers care about their local breweries a lot, and it’s useful to see the ones that win national competitions. We can’t keep up with local breweries, so seeing who wins awards helps find treasures hidden in our back yards. Winning an award can a little-known local brewery a big boost. Routinely winning medals year after year, meanwhile, creates a halo effect for certain breweries. In Oregon, it was very hard to dismiss 10 Barrel simply because it was owned by AB InBev (and now Tilray) because they kept winning medals at competitions. Little breweries like Pelican (in the 90s and aughts) or Von Ebert (last few years) that do very well begin attracting attention that forms a durable patina of quality—not from out-of-staters, but locally.
Yesterday I posted a poll on Twitter asking about whether and when people cared about GABF medals, and about half the respondents said, “for local breweries.” I personally would have checked “for certain styles,” because I care about who wins the indicator styles like IPA and pilsner—but that finished dead last. In all, three-quarters thought for one reason or another, the awards matter.
GABF is More Important Now
It’s interesting to think back through the years of the competition and how relevant the awards were at any given time. In 1987, the first year they held the competition, there were just twelve categories, and they constituted a strange mash-up of randomness. Among the categories breweries could compete in: “ales,” “alts” (not altbier), and continental pilsners. (Which Sam Adams won—not the continental amber lager categories, also available. The 80s were odd.) Jim Koch was way more focused on winning the consumer choice award, which he had been using to market his beer as “the best beer in America.” Needless to say, few people were all that excited about the winner of the “alt” category. (Alaskan, by the way.)
It wasn’t really until a decade later, after a number of breweries had come onto the scene, that the GABF started to mean something. Small breweries were struggling to break through what seemed like an impossible number of 1,400 competitors. There was a lot of pretty bad beer then, too, and it didn’t hurt to be able to distinguish yourself for quality. Over the decades, the waxing and waning continued, and five years ago, it was again trending down. People didn’t care if you had a medal; they cared if you had a four-pack of hazy IPA.
Now? The market’s tough. Breweries are folding at a more alarming clip. Beer isn’t trendy. With so many breweries and so much beer, it’s actually valuable to have a third party vouch for you. I often joke about how many catergories there are, but the odds of winning a medal are not great. Last year, breweries submitted almost ten thousand beers, and 300 won medals. This isn’t a random sampling, either—breweries sent those beers they thought were potentially medal-worthy.
Finally, and this is a big one, I think breweries need a reason to celebrate, too. With so many stressors and unhappy things happening in the industry, winning a medal—even in an abstruse category—is a great reason to smile.
Brewers Keep a Different Score
It may not matter to the consumer, but the GABF drives the market in unseen ways. The GABF is sort of like a trade conference for brewers in that they get to try each other’s beer, talk about what they’re doing, learn about new techniques, and see what’s hot. If Hoppin’ Woodpecker wins a gold in IPA (category 64) instead of honey beer, you may not care, but brewers will. They’re going to head over to try it and see if the head Woodpecker is doing something new they should know about. As the industry has gotten more professional, the GABF becomes a way for industry colleagues to measure themselves against one another and learn new things. That affects the techniques and ingredients they choose, the beers they make, and what, ultimately, appears in your glass.
Some of the categories really matter, too. IPA and pilsner of course, but other hoppy styles, lagers, and styles the brewery specializes in can all be very gratifying inside a brewery. I trade texts/emails with winning breweries, and they don’t hide their pride privately. Winning means a lot to them. As a consequence, medals can have company-wide effects that aren’t obvious from the outside.
One Brewery is Always a Winner
Marketing pros will tell you that winning at the GABF doesn’t translate into sales. And in 99 of the hundred categories, I believe them. But one category can really change things for a brewery: IPA. Last year 423 breweries bought a lottery ticket by entering that category because they know that winning will bring them a lot of attention, locally and nation-wide. In those articles announcing the winners, many will mention who won gold in IPA. That’s one category almost everyone cares about.
I have been somewhat dismayed by how much beer chat has turned into industry and/or business chat. Discussions of the pleasurable turn quickly into the salable. The GABF is one antidote to that. People get together in a large hall to select the tastiest beers in the country, and later thousands more gather in an even larger hall to guzzle beer for the sheer pleasure of it. It’s a reminder that the root of our passion isn’t measured in dollars, but something only our tongues and noses can tell us.
PHOTOS: GABF