Craft Beer
I love quality craft beer!
Introduction: Why Did I Do This?
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Why? Easy to answer - I love craft beer and I have before many of you enjoyed your first beer. Decades ago I can say that I traveled to every craft brewery in the US - at least everyone that I could find! It was fun to try the beers (typically over-indulging by trying a pint of each one). I would enjoy some good food - most of the time. Like many, I collected pint glasses and did so for many years. Once I ran out of wall space, the nearly 1,000 pint glasses were given away. I did save a few that held particular memories.
I have been a beer judge, brewed many barrels of beer at home and as a guest brewer, and I have traveled to the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) many times. I maintain 3 kegs in my home all the time. (I do not share beer with my Golden Retriever, Wheat.)
Professionally, my life has involved data, most recently as a data scientist. As such, I love data and order. When I studied to become a certified beer judge (Beer Judge Certification Program, Inc. (BJCP), I loved learning the history, definitions and categorization of many beer styles. Foolishly, I thought everyone would follow these beer style and categorization recommendations. Like so many times in my life, I was wrong. When I reviewed results of the 2022 GABF results, I saw styles of beer categorized in ways I did not recognize. At the time, I thought nothing of it. I assumed that my memory had began to fade and my recall was mistaken. But then I started to look a bit deeper and found even at GABF beer naming recommendations were often ignored.
This set in motion a project I thought would take days that turned into months. Reconciling the entire history GABF results became an obsession. I then harmonized not only GABF recommendations but also beer categorization recommendations from the Brewers Association and Beer Advocate.
After normalizing the data, I explore GABF results using BJCP 2021 guidelines. This calibrates the data so comparisons are more consistent and accurate. You can find lots of data analysis on beer competitions on the web, but I believe this work is original and unparalleled. I could find no other resources that have taken 40 years of GABF competitions and categorized everything per BJCP 2021 guidelines. This leads to better and more consistent analytical results when comparing beer preferences over time.
Enjoy!
Beer 101
Fermenting grains used to create beer, it was a process that was done in the home (or cave). This begs the question - when did mankind start brewing? Well, we don’t really know. Historians currently believe that the first fermented beverages were around 12,000 years ago - close to when humans began developing crops. But we have hard evidence of brewing about 6,000 years ago in the form of a Sumerian tablet and a 3,900 year old poem that contains the oldest known recipe.
A few millenia later. . . .Prohibition
The U.S. flirted with the idea of being dry but it just drove brewing back into the home. In 1919 it became illegal to make, buy, or sell intoxicating beverages. However, had it not been for Prohibition we might not have malt syrups and there may not be wide scale extract brewing. Since the large breweries could not make beer, they simply started turning out these malt extracts and selling them for baking. The American home brewer was excited to do some baking. In 1926, 438 million pounds of malt extract were produced and the next year it was up to 450 million. In a single year during Prohibition, hop sales for this home baking exceeded 13 million pounds. By 1929, the Prohibition Bureau estimated that approximately 700 million gallons of beer was made at home. Then in 1933 a funny thing happened. Prohibition was done away with, the 160 breweries (down from 2,300 in 1880 and 1,400 in 1914) in the country could once again start churning out beer.
Due to an oversight in the way the law was written, while making wine at home was legal, brewing a batch of beer at home remained forbidden. This didn’t stop people completely, of course. As more and more groups of people broke the law to brew at home the US government got around to correcting its oversight - 45 years later. Jimmy Carter signed HR 1337 into law which made it explicitly legal to homebrew beer. When that law was passed, there were only ~50 breweries in the USA. Today, there are ~7k permitted breweries. With that in mind, when the GABF festival started, breweries like Anheuser-Busch, Miller Brewing Company, and Coors Brewing Company controlled even more of the market share than they do today. The newcomers at that time were Boston Beer Company (i.e. Sam Adams) and Alaskan Brewing Co., founded in 1984 and 1986 respectively. That history plays a significant role in our analysis because the newer breweries of today are years behind these older breweries with regard to winning awards. (You will learn more about this when Pabst is explored later in this document.)
The 1978 law only applied at the federal level. The states were allowed to make their own laws regarding homebrewing. Since 1978, the beer industry has boomed. To support the home brewer more maltsters, hop growers, yeast labs and shops have popped up across the country. The home brewing movement has provided the growing craft brew industry with many of its brewers and customers. Finally in 2013 Alabama and Mississippi have voted to legalize home brewing, meaning that for the first time since 1919 it was legal to brew in your home in every State of the country.
To equitably compare beer competitions, you must first know about 2 key organizations:
- Great American Beer Fest (GABF)
- Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP)
GABF - What is it?
Established in 1982, GABF is the largest ticketed beer festival in the U.S. and one of the largest in the world. GABF was founded by brewer Charlie Papazian. The first festival was held in conjunction with the American Homebrewers Association’s annual conference in Boulder, Colorado in June 1982, featuring 24 participating breweries and 47 beers. In a private event held the week prior, judges evaluated the beers in the associated competition, and awarded medals in over 100 beer style categories. In 2019, the panel consisted of 322 judges from 18 countries, who evaluated over 9,400 beers from 800 breweries. The in-person festival was cancelled in 2020 and 2021, with a virtual event held instead, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It returned in 2022.
The GABF is held every year in Denver, Colorado. A wide diversity of American beers side by side with leading beers from all over the world is offered in the festival. Dozens of beer masters and beers judges from the US and abroad test the quality of the beers according to categories and grade it. The three leading beers will get medals: gold, silver, and bronze.
What is the Beer Judge Certification Program?
The Beer Judge Certification Program, Inc. (BJCP) is a world-wide certifying organization for judges of beer and related fermented products. Founded in 1985, it has a presence in over 60 countries and have more than 7500 active judges in the program. Judges are certified through an examination covering technical aspects of brewing, world beer styles, the purpose of the BJCP, and judging procedures, and by demonstrating practical judging skills. Judges are ranked based on their examination scores and accumulation of practical judging experience.
Most pertinent to this analysis is the BJCP guidelines. These guidelines are just that - guidelines, not commandments. Competitions may create their own award categories that are distinct from the style categories in these guidelines. There is no requirement that competitions use style categories as award categories! Individual styles can be grouped in any manner to create desired award categories in competition; for instance, to evenly distribute the number of entries in each award category.
BJCP realizes that many of the defined styles can have alternate names, or are called different things in other (or even the same) parts of the world. In the past, BJCP used multiple names in style titles to avoid showing preference, but this too often led people to incorrectly use all those names simultaneously. So, BJCP selected one unambiguous name for each style.
The BJCP Style Guidelines use some specific terms with specialized meaning: Category, Subcategory and Style. When thinking of beer, mead and cider styles, the subcategory is the most important label - subcategory means essentially the same thing as style and identifies the major characteristic of one type of beer, mead or cider. The larger categories are arbitrary groupings of beers, meads or ciders, usually with similar character but some subcategories are not necessarily related to others within the same category. The purpose of the structure within the BJCP Style Guidelines is to group styles of beer, mead and cider for competition purposes; do not attempt to derive additional meaning from these groupings.
Guidelines are meant to describe general characteristics of the most common examples, and serve as an aid for judging; they are not meant to be rigorously-applied specifications that are used to punish slightly unusual examples. They are suggestions, not hard limits. Allow for some flexibility in judging so that well-crafted examples can be rewarded. The guidelines are written in detail to facilitate the process of the structured evaluation of beer as practiced in home brewing competitions; don’t use each individual statement in style descriptions as a reason to disqualify a beer.
BJCP tenets are:
- BJCP Style Guidelines are guidelines not specifications.
- Style Guidelines are written primarily for homebrew competitions - style descriptions are written primarily to aid in judging.
- Styles change over time
- Not every commercial beer fits BJCP styles
- BJCP has not defined every possible beer style
- Commercial examples change over time
- Ingredients change over time
- Most styles are fairly broad
- BJCP Guidelines are extensible
Style History
In 2015, many styles were added, some styles were divided into multiple categories, and some simply renamed. Styles are organized into categories following a philosophy that groups styles with similar judging characteristics rather than a common heritage or family name. Do not assume that the same primary characteristic (e.g., color, strength, balance, dominant flavor, country of origin) was used to determine each category grouping - the reasoning was more nuanced.
The 2021 BJCP Style Guidelines are a minor revision to the 2015 edition, itself a major update of the 2008 edition. The goals of the 2015 edition were to better address world beer styles as found in their local markets, keep pace with emerging craft beer market trends, describe historical beers now finding a following, better describe the sensory characteristics of modern brewing ingredients, take advantage of new research and references, and help competition organizers better manage the complexity of their events. These goals have not changed in the 2021 edition.
Beer Styles - A Problem
Under the current 2021 Guidelines, GABF recommends 33 Categories of beer.
[1] "Standard American Beer" "International Lager"
[3] "Czech Lager" "Pale Malty European Lager"
[5] "Pale Bitter European Beer" "Amber Malty European Lager"
[7] "Amber Bitter European Beer" "Dark European Lager"
[9] "Strong European Beer" "German Wheat Beer"
[11] "British Bitter" "Pale Commonwealth Beer"
[13] "Brown British Beer" "Scottish Ale"
[15] "Irish Beer" "Dark British Beer"
[17] "Strong British Ale" "Pale American Ale"
[19] "Amber and Brown American Beer" "American Porter and Stout"
[21] "IPA" "Strong American Ale"
[23] "European Sour Ale" "Belgian Ale"
[25] "Strong Belgian Ale" "Historical Beer"
[27] "American Wild Ale" "Fruit Beer"
[29] "Spiced Beer" "Alternative Fermentables Beer"
[31] "Smoked Beer" "Wood Beer"
[33] "Specialty Beer" These categories are the divided into recommended styles of beer:
[1] "American Light Lager" "American Lager"
[3] "Cream Ale" "American Wheat Beer"
[5] "International Pale Lager" "International Amber Lager"
[7] "International Dark Lager" "Czech Lager"
[9] "Czech Premium Pale Lager" "Czech Amber Lager"
[11] "Czech Dark Lager" "Munich Helles"
[13] "Festbier" "Helles Bock"
[15] "German Leichtbier" "Kolsch"
[17] "German Helles Exportbier" "German Pils"
[19] "Marzen" "Rauchbier"
[21] "Dunkles Bock" "Vienna Lager"
[23] "Altbier" "Munich Dunkel"
[25] "Schwarzbier" "Doppelbock"
[27] "Eisbock" "Baltic Porter"
[29] "Weissbier" "Dunkles Weissbier"
[31] "Weizenbock" "Ordinary Bitter"
[33] "Best Bitter" "Strong Bitter"
[35] "British Golden Ale" "Australian Sparkling Ale"
[37] "English IPA" "Dark Mild"
[39] "British Brown Ale" "English Porter"
[41] "Scottish Light" "Scottish Heavy"
[43] "Scottish Export" "Irish Red Ale"
[45] "Irish Stout" "Irish Extra Stout"
[47] "Sweet Stout" "Oatmeal Stout"
[49] "Tropical Stout" "Foreign Extra Stout"
[51] "British Strong Ale" "Old Ale"
[53] "Wee Heavy" "English Barleywine"
[55] "Blonde Ale" "American Pale Ale"
[57] "American Amber Ale" "California Common"
[59] "American Brown Ale" "American Porter"
[61] "American Stout" "Imperial Stout"
[63] "American IPA" "Specialty IPA"
[65] "Hazy IPA" "Double IPA"
[67] "Strong American Ale" "American Barleywine"
[69] "Wheatwine" "Berliner Weisse"
[71] "Flanders Red Ale" "Oud Bruin"
[73] "Lambic" "Gueuze"
[75] "Fruit Lambic" "Gose"
[77] "Witbier" "Belgian Pale Ale"
[79] "Biere de Garde" "Belgian Blonde Ale"
[81] "Saison" "Belgian Golden Strong Ale"
[83] "Monastic Ale" "Belgian Single"
[85] "Belgian Dubbel" "Belgian Tripel"
[87] "Belgian Dark Strong Ale" "Kellerbier"
[89] "Kentucky Common" "Lichtenhainer"
[91] "London Brown Ale" "Piwo Grodziskie"
[93] "Pre-Prohibition Lager" "Pre-Prohibition Porter"
[95] "Roggenbier" "Sahti"
[97] "Brett Beer" "Mixed-Fermentation Sour Beer"
[99] "Wild Specialty Beer" "Straight Sour Beer"
[101] "Fruit Beer" "Fruit and Spice Beer"
[103] "Specialty Fruit Beer" "Grape Ale"
[105] "Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer" "Autumn Seasonal Beer"
[107] "Winter Seasonal Beer" "Specialty Spice Beer"
[109] "Alternative Grain Beer" "Alternative Sugar Beer"
[111] "Classic Style Smoked Beer" "Specialty Smoked Beer"
[113] "Wood-Aged Beer" "Specialty Wood-Aged Beer"
[115] "Commercial Specialty Beer" "Mixed-Style Beer"
[117] "Experimental Beer" Given these standards, you would think they would be followed by the judges in competitions. Not the case! Like all data, the data from GABF Competitions is dirty and problematic. Reviewing all the competitions to date, 538 distinct styles are used. Here is a sample:
[1] "American Amber Lager"
[2] "American Amber/Red Ale"
[3] "American Black Ale or American Stout"
[4] "American Cream Ale"
[5] "American Fruit Beer"
[6] "American Pilsener"
[7] "American Sour Ale"
[8] "American Wheat Beer"
[9] "American-Belgo-Style Ale"
[10] "American-Style Brown Ale"
[11] "American-Style India Pale AleCategory Sponsor: Micro Matic"
[12] "American-Style Lager"
[13] "American-Style Pale AleCategory Sponsor: Grandstand"
[14] "American-Style Strong Pale Ale"
[15] "Australasian, Latin American or Tropical Light Lager"
[16] "Belgian Fruit Beer"
[17] "Belgian-Style Abbey Ale"
[18] "Belgian-Style Ale or French-Style Ale"
[19] "Belgian-Style Sour Ale"
[20] "Belgian-Style Strong Specialty Ale"
[21] "Belgian-Style Witbier"
[22] "Bock"
[23] "Bohemian-Style PilsenerCategory Sponsor: Wyeast Laboratories"
[24] "Brett BeerCategory Sponsor: Wyeast Laboratories"
[25] "Brown Porter"
[26] "Chili Beer"
[27] "Chocolate Beer"
[28] "Classic Saison"
[29] "Coffee Beer"
[30] "Coffee Stout or PorterCategory Sponsor: Chart Industries" The Beer Categorization and Style Problem
The primary problem with GABF Competition results are that only a Category is recorded. There is no distinction between a Category or a Style of beer (or Sub-Style). Therefore, the information provided requires interpretation to derive the appropriate Category and Style. This effort is not perfect. Assumptions had to be made. The competition results provided limited information on the type of beer judged. There is no distinction between Category or Style. For example, an entry of American Black Ale or American Stout was modified with a Category of American Porter and Stout and a style of American Stout. There is no way to go back in time to determine if the beer in question (in this case it was called
Hooked On Onyx) was truly a stout or not. I had to guess.
Want to peek inside some of the code that does all this work? Not really, huh? Some might want to see.
Category_Raw == "Chili Beer" ~ "Spiced Beer",
Category_Raw == "Chocolate Beer" ~ "Spiced Beer",
Category_Raw == "Classic Saison" ~ "Strong Belgian Ale",
Category_Raw == "Coffee Beer" ~ "Spiced Beer",
Category_Raw == "Contemporary American-Style Lager" ~ "Standard American Beer",
Category_Raw == "Contemporary Gose" ~ "European Sour Ale",
Category_Raw == "Dortmunder or German-Style Oktoberfest" ~ "Pale Bitter European Beer",
Category_Raw == "English Ale" ~ "British Bitter",
Category_Raw == "English India Pale Ale or New Zealand India Pale Ale" ~ "Pale Commonwealth Beer",
Category_Raw == "Experimental India Pale Ale" ~ "Specialty Beer",
Category_Raw == "Experimental Wood-Aged Beer" ~ "Wood Beer",
Category_Raw == "Extra Special Bitter" ~ "British Bitter",
Category_Raw == "Field Beer" ~ "Spiced Beer",
Category_Raw == "Fresh Hop Beer" ~ "Specialty Beer",
Category_Raw == "Fruit Wheat Beer" ~ "Fruit Beer",
Category_Raw == "Fruited American Sour Ale" ~ "American Wild Ale",
Category_Raw == "German Dark Lager" ~ "Dark European Lager",
Category_Raw == "German-Style Dark Lager" ~ "Dark European Lager",
Category_Raw == "German Sour Ale" ~ "European Sour Ale",
Category_Raw == "German Wheat Ale" ~ "German Wheat Beer",This was an exhausting effort (1,00s of category and style transformations), but all the previous GABF Competition results have been normalized to the current beer categories and beer styles defined in the 2021 GABF Standards.
In the end, I assert this review of beer is more accurate than any before it. Assigning standards to the beer categories and styles make the analysis and results more accurate, trustworthy and repeatable.
| Compare Festival Categorization to GABF 2021 Recommedations | ||
| GABF Results | Category Count | Style Count |
|---|---|---|
| Raw | 520 | Not Available |
| Modified to Fit Standards | 33 | 117 |
Alternative Beer Categorization
While BJCP Guidelines are undoubtedly the leading source for beer categorizing and style descriptions, it is not the only source. BJCP Guidelines are useful for professional brewers and craft brewing enthusiasts. For the ones more interested in drinking the beer than knowing the beer, broader definitions/guidelines are available. Beer Advocate and Brewers Association are two examples.
Both organizations greatly simply the identification of beer styles. BJCP supports 34 categories of beer compared to 10 and 16 categories from the Brewers Associations and Beer Advocate, respectfully.
 |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Amber and Brown American Beer | North American Origin Lager Styles | Pale Lagers |
| American Porter and Stout | North American Origin Ale Styles | Pale Ales |
| Standard American Beer | All Origin Hybrid Mixed Lagers or Ales | Stouts |
| Fruit Beer | Belgian and French Origin Ale Styles | Hybrid Beers |
| Historical Beer | British Origin Ale Styles | Specialty Beers |
| American Wild Ale | European Origin Lager Styles | Wild-Sour Beers |
| Specialty Beer | German Origin Ale Styles | Wheat Beers |
| Belgian Ale | Mead | Brown Beers |
| Strong Belgian Ale | Irish Origin Ale Styles | India Pale Ales |
| IPA | Other Origin Lager Styles | Strong Ales |
| Strong American Ale | Bocks | |
| European Sour Ale | Porters | |
| Amber Malty European Lager | Dark Ales | |
| Pale Bitter European Beer | Brown Ales | |
| Spiced Beer | Dark Lagers | |
| British Bitter | Mead | |
| Pale Commonwealth Beer | ||
| Brown British Beer | ||
| Wood Beer | ||
| Dark European Lager | ||
| German Wheat Beer | ||
| Amber Bitter European Beer | ||
| Strong European Beer | ||
| Pale American Ale | ||
| Mead | ||
| International Lager | ||
| Irish Beer | ||
| Pale Malty European Lager | ||
| Dark British Beer | ||
| Strong British Ale | ||
| Scottish Ale | ||
| Smoked Beer | ||
| Czech Lager | ||
| Alternative Fermentables Beer | ||
| 34 | 10 | 16 |
Beer Tree Maps
To understand how different the different guidelines are, tree maps are useful to show this information graphically in a manneer that is easily interpreted. To get started on this path to understanding, let’s evaluate the raw GABF results in terms of the beer styles represented in the last 40 years.
In the image below, it is clear there have been many styles of beer (remember, most of these were not named using BJCP guidelines so it it a bit misleading). The larger the rectangle, the more entries for that specific style have been recorded. Bock, Robust Porter, Imperial Stout and others have been entered many times compared to may other styles of beer.
Now compare the beer categories of the 3 organizations. The simplicity of the Beer Advocate and Brewers Associations recommendations is simple compared to the more comprehensive BJCP 2021 Guideline Recommendations.
Beer Competitions
Now that we understand beer and GABF Competitions, let’s start seeing some competition results!
First, let’s see who entered and was awards GABF Medals in the first few years of the competition.
| Great American Beer Festival | |||||||
| The early years. There was only one category of beer - Consumer Preference Poll. |
|||||||
| Beer Name | Brewery | City | State | Category | Medals Won | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 | 🥈 | 🥉 | |||||
| 1983 | |||||||
| Sierra Nevada Pale Ale | Sierra Nevada Brewing | Chico | CA | Consumer Preference Poll | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Sierra Nevada Porter | Sierra Nevada Brewing | Chico | CA | Consumer Preference Poll | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Anchor Porter | Anchor Brewing | San Francisco | CA | Consumer Preference Poll | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 1984 | |||||||
| Russian Imperial Stout | Yakima Brewing | Sunnyside | WA | Consumer Preference Poll | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Grants Scottish Ale | Yakima Brewing | Sunnyside | WA | Consumer Preference Poll | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| New Amsterdam Amber | Old New York Brewing | New York | NY | Consumer Preference Poll | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 1985 | |||||||
| Samuel Adams Boston Lager | Boston Beer | Boston | MA | Consumer Preference Poll | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Hibernia Dunkel Weizen | Hibernia Brewing | Eau Claire | WI | Consumer Preference Poll | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Snake River Amber Lager | Snake River Brewing | Jackson | WY | Consumer Preference Poll | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 1986 | |||||||
| Samuel Adams Boston Lager | Boston Beer | Boston | MA | Consumer Preference Poll | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Festival Ale | Boulder Brewing | Boulder | CO | Consumer Preference Poll | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Dock Street Amber Ale | Dock Street Brewing | Philadelphia | PA | Consumer Preference Poll | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 1987 | |||||||
| Samuel Adams Festival Lager | Boston Beer | Boston | MA | Consumer Preference Poll | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Chinook Alaskan Amber Beer | Alaskan Brewing and Bottling | Juneau | AK | Consumer Preference Poll | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 1988 | |||||||
| Chinook Alaskan Amber | Alaskan Brewing and Bottling | Juneau | AK | Consumer Preference Poll | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 1989 | |||||||
| Samuel Adams Boston Lager | Boston Beer | Boston | MA | Consumer Preference Poll | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Complete GABF Competition Results
The entire history of GABF Results is presented below into 2 tables. The first table format is one I prefer but the overhead of the medal icons creates a technical challenge that I had to avoid by capturing the last 5 years of results in the first table.