Breweries celebrate medals at 2009 beer awards
Published Thursday October 8th, 2009
While other Atlantic breweries are left scratching their heads.
The 2009 Canadian Brewing Awards medal winners were announced last week, and, as in past years, several Atlantic breweries should be ecstatic with the results, particularly Moosehead, whose #1 beer, Alpine, won THE Gold Medal for North American Style Lager.
I emphasized THE in that sentence because it is important to make that distinction, in light of the controversy surrounding some of the results of this competition, and the constant bickering over medals that happens with other events of this nature, whether they be for wine, beer or spirits.
Every competition has its quirks. Some award one Gold, one Silver, one Bronze and that's it. Others give multiple medals, as long as the scores warrant it. For example, all wines scoring 90/100 or above might get Golds in some competitions. Scores are very important to those competitions that require a product to reach a minimum score threshold in order to medal. Others use a ranking or percentile system, where it doesn't matter what you score; finishing first (or in the top percentile) warrants a Gold. I have seen some events award a level above Gold, either a Double Gold or a Platinum, meaning that product was the Best in Category. Some offer awards for Best in Competition, Best in a wider category, such as White Wine, and Best Value.
There are many ways to do these things, and no method is perfect. In addition, some competitions might have thousands of entries, while others may only see a few hundred, and some categories may have 30 or more entries, while others may only have a small handful, even less than five.
If you follow what I'm saying here then you quickly realize that every award you see on a product has to be taken in context. When you see a medal on a bottle, read about it in print or online, or hear someone bragging about it, you must first find out how that competition works before buying out the ANBL's stock of that item.
The context for the Canadian Brewing Awards is that they typically only award one Gold, one Silver, and one Bronze, although this year they also gave out "Honourable Mentions" which is probably a small consolation for those who got it, especially considering that they quite possibly finished infinitesimally lower than the Bronze winner.
Because there is only one Gold, this makes Alpine's win all the more impressive. No doubt you'll be hearing from Moosehead very soon about this, and they'll probably use it in their marketing, and why not? I'm not sure who else entered, but I know for sure they beat out Sleeman Original Draught, Russell Brewing's Rocky Mountain Pilsner from BC, and Molson's Carling Lager.
I've always said to people that, even though I don't often drink mainstream beer, Alpine and Moosehead Green are more authentic than the other big brewery lagers. Moosehead also won a Bronze in the Light Lager category with Alpine Light.
Other multiple Atlantic winners were Garrison from Halifax, and Northampton in Fredericton, brewers of the Picaroons brands. Dooryard Summer Ale won Bronze in the North American Style Wheat category, while Picaroon's Blonde Ale won Bronze in the North American Style Blonde/Golden Ale group. Surprisingly, Pump House, a former winner of Brewery Of The Year at this competition, entered a good number of beers but only won one medal, a Silver for their seasonal Raspberry Wheat.
Garrison's super hoppy Imperial Pale Ale failed to three-peat as the Canadian Beer Of The Year, losing out to Yukon Red Amber Ale, but they won a Silver in the Strong or Belgian Style Ale category with their Winter Warmer, Bronze for Jalapeno Ale in the Fruit & Vegetable category, and Gold with their Grand Baltic Porter, in the Strong Baltic Porter category, which I suspect had only one entry: theirs!
How could that happen? Well, since this competition has minimum score standards to win the various medals, a single entry in a category can win Gold, or Silver or Bronze for that matter, even if there are no other medals awarded. Conversely, there could be 20 entries and NO medals, if the judges, who were all BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program) level, don't think any are worthy.
This leads to the aforementioned controversy. There were several "holes" in the awards, where no medals were awarded. For example, there was no Gold awarded in the North American Style Amber Lager or North American Style Dark Lager category, although Silver and Bronze were given.
There were several other instances, but the most notable was in the India Pale Ale category, mainly because there was a lot of talk locally about none of the Atlantic IPA's winning, especially considering that Garrison has won Beer of the Year two years running with their Imperial Pale Ale, and that local beer geeks went gaga over the 37 Hour Simcoe SMaSH from Halifax's Hart & Thistle, which I know was entered. In fact the brewer, Greg Nash, brewer at Hart & Thistle in Halifax and formerly of Pump House and Garrison, posted a "rant" on his Brewer's Blog (http://hartandthistle.blogspot.com/2009/09/canadian-brewing-awards-rant.html).
Read it yourself; it's interesting stuff for beer geeks, but I did note a couple things from his rant, and the comments that followed. For one, I now know that, besides his own IPA, he also entered the Double Dementia IPA and regular IPA from Pump House when he worked there, and neither of those got a medal "" not even an Honourable Mention. Nash doesn't suggest that any of his beers should have won Gold, and he doesn't bash the Gold and Silver medalists, which are indeed fine ales (I've had the Silver medal winning No. 9 IPA from Mike Duggan and it's a beauty). He emphatically argues, though, that not giving a bronze or even an Honourable Mention is ridiculous.
"Of the three IPAs listed above," Nash writes, "I simply cannot believe that NONE of them are worthy of at least a bronze medal or higher. According to BJCP guidelines the qualifying score for a bronze medal is 30 points, Simcoe SMaSH scores were 44, 37 and 35 from the three judges, an average of 38.66 (Editors note: these scores are out of 50)."
And what about Garrison Imperial Pale Ale? It won the category two years running, not to mention Beer of the Year. It was entered this year, but didn't win a medal or even an Honourable Mention. Houston, we have a problem (although, on speaking to brewer Daniel Girard, he wasn't too bothered about it; what's done is done).
The problem seems to be that some judges felt these IPA's should have been entered as Double IPA's, so they decided not to award them medals as IPA's. But there is no separate Double IPA category.
I think it makes sense to consider Double IPA as a sub-category of the IPA category, thus making these beers eligible, but I was not there judging this year due to prior commitments, so I have no say in the matter.
At press time, the brass at the Canadian Brewing Awards are considering Nash's arguments, and have been in discussion with Paul Dickey, a National Level judge who presided over the awards on behalf of the BJCP.
We'll see what rolls out, but, in the meantime, I'd like to say "Cheers!" to all the winners, especially our Atlantic Breweries, and Mill Street Brewery in Toronto, who won Brewery of the Year for the third straight year.
For the full Results of the competition go to Canadianbrewingawards.com.
Craig Pinhey likes Alpine's new camouflage beer can promotion, even though he has no interest in driving an ATV. Visit him at www.frogspad.ca.
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