{"id":15340,"date":"2018-09-26T12:34:57","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T18:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/?p=15340"},"modified":"2018-09-27T16:01:36","modified_gmt":"2018-09-27T22:01:36","slug":"while-waiting-for-numbers-from-brewersstats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/while-waiting-for-numbers-from-brewersstats\/","title":{"rendered":"While waiting for numbers from @BrewersStats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you take the time to work through all the comments that followed Andy Crouch&#8217;s suggestion (click on the bird) you might not make it back here, but go look anyway.<\/p>\n<p><center><\/center><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I think it&#39;s difficult for individuals in other parts of the US (Colorado, California, the Pac NW) to understand how little breweries &amp; consumers in other regions care about the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GABF?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@gabf<\/a>. In New England, it&#39;s rarely discussed, few participate in the event, and consumers don&#39;t care.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Andy Crouch (@BeerScribe) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BeerScribe\/status\/1044263930623905792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 24, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/center><\/p>\n<p>As happens on Twitter, different threads developed and more questions came up. Bart Watson will be answering some them soon with what has turned into an annual crunching of numbers. I&#8217;ll add the link here. Meanwhile, his reports from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brewersassociation.org\/insights\/2017-gabf-medal-winners-analyzed\/\">2017<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brewersassociation.org\/insights\/2016-gabf-medal-winners-analyzed\/\">2016<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brewersassociation.org\/insights\/gabf-medal-winners-2015\/\">2015<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brewersassociation.org\/insights\/gabf-medal-winners-analyzed\/\">2014<\/a>. Lots of fun stuff, including the fact that he calculates expected medals versus actual medals won based on the difficulty of categories entered.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/images\/20180926-gabf.jpg\" width=\"610\" height=\"264\" alt=\"GABF attendees waiting for the festival to begin\" class=\"aligncenter size-full\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve got three quick items for the three or so of you who are still around after all of that. Or maybe one thought stated three ways.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; I agree that GABF is <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/StanHieronymus\/status\/1043496435612704770\">not the center<\/a> of the beer universe, and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/goodbeerhunting\/status\/1044340314452963328\">@goodbeerhunting<\/a> is <em>partially<\/em> correct that &#8220;GABF mostly represents that certain boom era of the early 90s. It contains specific ideals, aesthetics, and preferences that don\u2019t connect with many who pre\/post date that &#8216;movement.'&#8221; But I don&#8217;t think what happens at GABF says in Denver. Daria and I first attended in 1993. There were 295 &#8220;regional specialty breweries, microbreweries and brewpubs&#8221; at the beginning of that year and 382 at the end &#8212; plus, of course, some larger breweries. Two hundred and six breweries (including Pabst, Falstaff and some even larger breweries) poured beer in Denver. They represented a good portion of the breweries in the country and an even larger chunk of what was brewed.<\/p>\n<p>It would have possible to drink one ounce from each of them, about 6 liters during three sessions. Last weekend 637 breweries had booths, plus there were multiple zones (Pro-Am, Heavy Medal, Collaborations, State Guilds, Jameson Caskmates) with still more beer. Drinking an ounce from each of the 800-plus breweries represented would have been a 24-liter challenge. And given that Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing and Coors Brewing no longer exist with those names or pour beer at GABF, <em>plus<\/em> that there are more than 6,000 breweries, well, a little harder to take the pulse of an industry.<\/p>\n<p>Nonethless, <a href=\"https:\/\/thetakeout.com\/great-american-beer-festival-2018-recap-beer-trends-1829254751\">Kate Bernot gives it a shot:<\/a> &#8220;Taken as a whole, the beers poured did offer a glimpse into where American craft beer is in 2018, and possibly where it\u2019s headed in the distant future.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>&#8211; The <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Beer_Notes\/status\/1044334179817857024\">value of GABF competition<\/a> also popped up on Twitter (and was the <a href=\"https:\/\/oct.co\/essays\/does-anyone-really-care-about-beer-awards\">subject of an op-ed piece<\/a> a few months ago). Perhaps this is simply proof I have been doing this stuff too long, but I wrote about this when Miller was still Miller and <a href=\"http:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/why-beer-medals-matter\/\">could win seven medals at World Beer Cup<\/a>. (Dogfish Head, on the other hand, still hadn&#8217;t captured its first GABF medal.) What&#8217;s might be most important is that customers care. I defer to something Todd Ashman said for the story, &#8220;Your customers can take ownership (of a medal). They think, &#8216;I had that beer, maybe even some from that batch.&#8217; They associate with the brewery, and they feel good about the place where they are a patron.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Granted, this was 14 years ago. But even though GABF keeps adding categories, winning a medal keeps getting harder. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brewersassociation.org\/insights\/2017-gabf-medal-winners-analyzed\/\">Watson has proof.<\/a> That Austin Beer Garden&#8217;s Rocket 100 won gold in 2015, 2017, and 2018 is astonishing. Same with Snake River Brewing Speargun Coffee Milk Stout in 2017 and 2018.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;  After <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/beerbabe\/status\/1044286245180968965\">Carla Jean Lauter<\/a> wrote &#8220;I&#8217;d love to see a histogram of how many breweries entered GABF and what size they are&#8221; I began looking up production numbers (in <em>The New Brewer<\/em> May\/June issue) of winners. Then I remembered that Watson had broken down winners by size last year, finding &#8220;Smaller regional brewers fared the best relative to expectations, but no size grouping jumps off the page as having extremely over or under performed.&#8221; Before I abandoned the mind-numbing project I noticed that the silver and bronze winners in the Belgian-style triple category didn&#8217;t brew much beer in 2017. It turns out bronze winner Paradigm Shift Brewing in Ohio was open only a month in 2017. Silver winner Village Idiot Brewing in New Jersey has been around a while, but brews beer only 1.5 barrels (46 gallons at a time). That means brewing 117 batches to produce 175 barrels in a year. The &#8212; shall we say sad? &#8212; discovery checking out Village Idiot was that the beer simply called &#8220;Belgian Tripel&#8221; on the GABF winners list is known as &#8220;Thong Remover Tripel&#8221; at the brewery. Nice to see the Brewers Association <a href=\"https:\/\/draftmag.com\/brewers-association-offensive-sexist-beer-labels\/\">policy against lewd and sexist beer names<\/a> in action, but too bad it is necessary. Still work to be done, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/beerbabe\">@beerbabe.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you take the time to work through all the comments that followed Andy Crouch&#8217;s suggestion (click on the bird) you might not make it back here, but go look anyway. I think it&#39;s difficult for individuals in other parts of the US (Colorado, California, the Pac NW) to understand how little breweries &amp; consumers &#8230; <a title=\"While waiting for numbers from @BrewersStats\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/while-waiting-for-numbers-from-brewersstats\/\" aria-label=\"More on While waiting for numbers from @BrewersStats\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beers-of-conviction","category-musing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-3Zq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15340"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15343,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15340\/revisions\/15343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}