Medals

Medals and other honors can raise your brewery’s profile, boost your team, and even increase sales. Yet with tighter budgets and more competitions than ever, breweries are carefully considering where and how many they can enter.

Some brewers put a lot of thought and care into their contest entries—and the rest are at a disadvantage. To increase your chances of winning, here are some top tips from the organizers of major international competitions.

This tiny brewpub on California’s Central Coast recently put the beer world on notice when, at the World Beer Cup, it pulled off what should have been impossible—then very nearly did it again at GABF. Here’s how it happened.

Which states have won the most medals in the Great American Beer Festival, relative to the total breweries in the state? Which ones win gold most often?

The pandemic has sidelined another festival, but the competition for barrel-aged beers will continue, and would-be festgoers can buy mixed sixers to participate from home.

GABF goes online this year—our pretzel necklaces will look fine on Zoom—while the competition will proceed with care. August 28 is the deadline to submit beers.

There’s really no trick to doing well at competitions—just make flawless beer and enter it into the right category. So easy everybody can do it, right?