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The 2012 World Beer Championships
A consumer-focused competition devoted to finding and understanding great beers
The World Beer Championships,
founded in 1994, is America’s oldest international beer competition and
is open to all commercially produced beers from around the world,
regardless of US distribution. It is a medal-based competition that
awards its medals based on the proprietary blind tasting methodology
developed by the Beverage Testing Institute (BTI) and bands of the
consumer accepted, 100-point quality rating scale.
Instead of
trying to cram the tasting of hundreds or thousands of beers into a
week, or even a weekend, like other beer competitions, the World Beer
Championships reviews a different category of beer every other month
and carefully blind tastes no more than thirty-five beers a day with a
small cadre of experienced judges from the retail, on-premise,
distribution, and importing trades—all certified by BTI. Beers are
generally consistent, recipe-based products, unlike differing vintages
of wine, so creating consistent and reliable reviews for consumers that
clearly address this fundamental nature of beer is a primary goal of
the World Beer Championships. In the World Beer Championships
evaluation process, significant differences in a product’s score
(particularly those placing a product into a different quality band)
from previous year’s score are reviewed by BTI’s editorial tasting
panel and stand if—having already eliminated the possibility of an
obvious beer fault—backup samples reveal the same results as the
initial panel tasting.
The World Beer Championships is
not slavish to, or dogmatic about style distinctions and
allows for the personal expression of a brewer’s creativity within a
conventional beer style. At the end of the day, a consumer cares about
the taste and quality of a beer, not how well it conforms to a rigidly
defined style parameter. Obviously a barleywine should not taste like a
light beer, and any wide or questionable variations within a style are
scored according to the flavor and appeal of the final results and duly
referenced in the tasting note so that consumers can decide if such a
variation is of interest to them.
Because of these proven
methods, the results of World Beer Championships are far more
consistent and meaningful to consumers than other competitions, where
routinely a given product will earn a gold or silver medal one year and
in the next it won’t place, even in a field of nearly identical
competition—a very confusing and nonsensical situation to present to
consumers, be they novices or connoisseurs. Finally, unlike other
competitions, the World Beer Championships regularly distributes its
ongoing, bi-monthly results and reviews to consumers and trade through
print, Internet, and broadcast media, ensuring that consumers have
access to up-to-date, no-nonsense reviews for their important buying
decisions.
All WBC beer reviews from the last several years are fully searchable online at: www.tastings.com/search_beer.lasso
A more detailed explanation of BTI’s tasting methodology can be found here: http://www.tastings.com/bti/how_we_taste.html
Our beer reference information including regions, styles, beer faults, food
pairing, glassware, and basic brewing techniques can be found here: http://www.tastings.com/beer/index.html
For
information about how to enter a commercially produced bottled or draft
beer into this year’s World Beer Championships, download an entry form here or contact us at beer@tastings.com.
Shipping Instructions
The World Beer Championships is more than a beer competition. It’s a
powerful beer marketing program that can help deliver sales whether you
are a brewer or an importer of beer—big or small.
The World
Beer Championships has six different tasting sessions per year that
cover all the major styles. You get more than a chance to win a medal,
you get a consumer friendly beer review and unlike other competitions,
we do the marketing legwork and help you get the word out to your
potential customers.
Unique Marketing Benefits:
A colorful medal certificate suitable for framing. We can even send you
our certificate logo for your ads, P.O.S. and packaging
material.
- Listings in All About Beer Magazine’s Buying Guide
We compile All About Beer Magazine’s Buying Guide to Beer from our
recent tasting sessions. Make sure all your beers are in America’s
#1 beer magazine!
- Postings to Tastings.com’s Searchable Database
The internet’s most powerful search engine for beers, wines, and
spirits. over 50,000 unique users a month use the search engines on
Tastings.com (www.tastings.com) to help them pick the right beer. We
also send you links to your beer for your site!
- A top beer is featured monthly in the Chicago Tribune.
- Your labels can be posted on Tastings.com next to your review.
Let’s be honest. A lot of people buy beers because they like the label. Let’s make sure those people get to see your beers too.
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NEW! - Inexpensive Shelf Talkers & single country use of BTI’s powerful logo for your beer’s packaging and POS.
You can get professional, printer ready shelf talker PDFs with a custom, consumer-friendly tasting note for your beers plus get to use our case moving logo for 2 years. AND if you pre-order the logo and POS you get a $150 discount!
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