Wednesday
The form by now was familiar, a hearty breakfast was required as judging begins immediately after. My choice was guided by my bodies needs: fresh fruit for vitamins and refreshment, cereals and bread for sustaining energy and to soak up the beer, an omelette with bacon & ham for vigour.
A glance at my judging schedule told me I was in the Arkansas room for one round of Brown Porter followed by Classic English Pale Ales. After lunch would be Wood and Barrel aged beers (up to 6.75% ABV) and American-style Stouts. There would be both second round and finals for the Pale Ales and Stouts meaning the beer count for the day was up around 90!
Style definition
The biggest difference between judging World Beer Cup (and, I'm told, the Great American Beer Festival, WBC's little sister) and the UK-based competitions is the support given to the judges by way of style definition. On balance this is a great benefit and one that I recommend we adopt, if UK-based competitions are to remain credible. Sure, when you have 90 categories - some with up to 4 sub-categories you HAVE to provide clear definitions to distinguish between styles, and help brewers determine which category they are to enter their beers into. With a competition on of well over 3000 entries, you have to chunk it down somehow. For me the 90 categories may take it a little too far - we were forced to rule out some very nice, flavourful and distinctive beers that I'd be happy to pay my own money for on technical style infringements.
The style definitions take the form of a title, verbal description and analytical ranges for Original and Final Gravity (expressed both in degrees and Plato), Alcohol (by weight and volume), Bitterness and Colour. Judges are expected to be able to distinguish by their senses and experience whether beers are out of style for aromatic, flavour and analytical parameters. So here's the rub - to be able to do that you MUST have a good level of experience, both in the World of brewing and beer judging. Contrast this with some of the more notable beer awards I've regularly judged - for CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale), SIBA (Society of Independent Brewers) and Tesco (ubiquitous monolith of the supermarket scene). In each case, when you roll up as a judge you get, at most, a cursory pre-brief and a given a category. No guidelines. SIBA and CAMRA are all but completely focused on Ales and sub-divide to around 6 categories, Tesco's have a single category for Lager (any colour or strength), one for fruit beers, experimentals and a handful for Ales. I like to think I know my beer styles and can discuss distinguishing flavour characteristics until late into the night with anyone that cares to. However many judges invited to preside over the UK competitions are not beer industry professionals. I've judged with retail buyers (who don't buy beer), equipment suppliers (who have never brewed beer), MP's (who like beer) and a wide variety of other professions unrelated to beer. I have no issue with this at all IF they are given a good brief on styles, judging techniques etc. beforehand, but in my experience, that is not the case. So, SIBA, CAMRA, Tesco etc. take heed, the standing of your Awards and competitions is at risk if they do not become more professional. After all, the financial success, credibility and standing of beers, brewers and breweries can be made or lost based upon such results.
Cream rising
To the results. Last nights Gala Awards dinner was an amazing spectacle, the World's biggest beer dinner, seating 1800 people to a gourmet delight put together by Executive Chef Sean Z. Paxton and Beer Writer Randy Mosher. 5 courses that blew you away with their inventiveness, including a total of 90 lbs of hops to aromatise honey, flavour salt, form pesto's and vinaigrette's. All the matched beers were former WBC award winners and all paired well with the menu selections. In a beer awards run by the American Craft brewing organisation (the Brewers Association) and held in America you might expect plenty of American entries and plenty of American winners, and so there were. No surprises there, particularly when many categories were reflective of the recent inventiveness and resourcefulness of the American craft brewers, pushing the creative envelope on traditional Old World beer styles. However, as the ceremony unfolded two emerging trends surprised me. Firstly, the rising cream of brewers challenging the established craft beer royalty - rewards were thin on the ground for Anchor, Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams. At the same time the like of Firestone Walker, a brewer largely specialising in pale ales and based in the largely unknown wine-growing area of Paso Robles, 2 Hrs North of LA, cleaned up with 5 Awards. Owned by Brit David Walker and Adam of the Firestone Car tyre dynasty, they run a beautiful brewery in which Matt Brynildsen and his team craft excellent beers. I had the pivelege to visit in the summer (cue another blog post) and could not be more happy for them.
A new World order
The second surprise for me was the number of times a small American micro, in many cases, ones I'd never heard of, won Gold in a category where one might have thought the winner could only be a traditional domestic brewer of the style: Classic British Pale Ales, Bohemian (Czech) Pilsner; Bavarian Hefe Weissen; Belgian Style ales all saw long-established domestic brewers losing out to new American craft brewers. Welcome to the new World order. The re-carting of the beer style map may raise a few eyebrows and furrow a few brows though it should not. I was judging the first three of the style categories mentioned above. After all, they are source of some of my favourite beers. In each case I my fellow judges included Nationals of the style in question, Britain, Czech Republic and Germany. These guys know their stuff, they know good beer, and in each case we gave the Gold medal to an American brewer.
I'll finish with two appeals.
1. An appeal to award organisers: learn from the World Beer Cup and it's professionally-run format. I'm happily discuss...
2. An appeal to World brewers: this is a great competition, if you think your beers are worthy World Cup winners - you will only find out by submitting them.
Finally, finally. Congratulations to the deserving brewers from the British Isles who DID submit their beers and DID win at the World Beer Cup 2010:
Brewdog - getting Gold in Imperial IPA's with Hardcore IPA
Porterhouse - getting Bronze in Classic Irish Dry Stouts with 'Porterhouse Plain Porter'
Roosters - doing the double with Gold AND Silver in the English Style Summer Ales with 'Leghorn' and 'Y.P.A. ' respectively.
Shepheard Neame - getting Bronze Special or Best Bitters with 'Spitfire' and
Thornbridge - getting Silver in speciality Honey beer with 'Bracia'.
Well done guys.
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