While I was down in Denver sampling from the huge variety of beer available at the Great American Beer Festival — or at least trying to! — the Canadian Brewing Awards were doled out in Toronto, and greeted with a healthy blend of respect and scepticism.
I won’t expound upon what I think about the individual winners, nor will I list them. (They are over here in full.) But I will pass comment on some of the criticism that has been levelled at the Awards here and here and again over here.
The CBAs are a young awards, and as such are suffering the kind of awkward growing pains that occur during normal adolescence and pre-adolescence. It’s to be expected. Still, problems persist, as have been rightly and, at times, rather unsympathetically observed elsewhere. Here’s my take:
- Problem one is a lack of inclusiveness, caused simply by breweries not entering their beers. Does anyone think Dieu du Ciel would not have brought home at least one medal if they had entered their beers? I thought not. This, however, will resolve itself as the CBAs grow and become more nationally important. (Memo to the CBA organizers: if you want to bring the Quebec brewers on board, look into partnering in some way with Montreal’s Mondial de la Biere.)
- Next up is the non-awarding of medals, about which I am in agreement with those who point out its absurdity. When a race is to the finish line, the top three finishers are awarded gold, silver and bronze, period. To say that the second place finisher did not run fast enough to warrant the silver, or the second place beer did not garner enough judging points, is ridiculous.
- Judging methods have also been called to task, and here I both agree and disagree. Judges are human and therefore fallible, but these imperfections can be regulated as much as possible with proper guidance. That Greg Nash is in possession of score sheets suggesting his 37hr Simcoe SMaSH should have been entered in the Double IPA category rather than as an IPA, when no such category existed, is indicative of, at least, misinformed judging and, at worst, lack of leadership.
- Still, judges can only work with what they have in front of them and the instructions they have been given, plus their palates, of course. So no one is in any position to say that this beer or that one should have received any given medal. On another day in different conditions and with the beers presented in a different order, the result could very well have been quite different.
- Finally, with respect to the judging, I highly suggest freeing those poor men and women from the dogma of the BJCP standards. Beer is about pleasure, not conformation to a given set of style standards, and while a pale ale should certainly taste like a pale ale in order to win gold, I strongly believe that the ultimate factor in what makes a beer a gold, silver or bronze medal winner should be its balance, complexity and enjoyment, not its colour or perceived IBU count.
