{"id":17436,"date":"2015-09-16T00:35:14","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T12:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=17436"},"modified":"2015-09-16T00:35:14","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T12:35:14","slug":"trophies-and-truth-telling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2015\/09\/16\/trophies-and-truth-telling\/","title":{"rendered":"Trophies and truth-telling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last\u00a0weekend, a small army of judges assembled in Christchurch to assess a considerably-larger army of entries in the annual round of the local Brewers’ Guild Awards.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> We won’t know the results until\u00a0next<\/em> weekend<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0but \u2015 SPOILER ALERT \u2015 Tui will\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0win the trophy for New Zealand styles. I don’t say this because I have any form as a gambler or guesser of these things, nor because it doesn’t deserve to score highly\u00a0in the peculiar context of how beers are judged against predefined styles. Instead, it’s ruled out of trophy contention thanks to a new rule \u2015 well, new-ish<\/em>; it seems it was enacted last year, but I didn’t notice,<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and didn’t see anyone else mention it, but I think\u00a0it’s worthy of some attention and some applause.<\/p>\n

\"Brewers<\/a>
Truth in trophy-giving<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“A beer will not be eligible to win a trophy if the commercial name of the entry stylistically differs from the class it was entered in,” says the new<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> rule. So Tui, a brown lager which fits squarely into the New Zealand Draught category despite being\u00a0feverishly marketed as an “East India Pale Ale”<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> can’t add to its small collection of silverware. Likewise there’ll be no more European Lager Styles trophies\u00a0for the vienna lager which Speight’s dress up as “Distinction Ale”. And maybe there’s a case to be made that Boundary Road’s Ha\u00e4gen\u00a0\u2015\u00a0which wears a German flag and generally looks as if it’s trying to sneak into a bar using Beck’s driver’s licence as ID<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u2015 should see the end of its winning ways in the “New Zealand-style lager” category.<\/p>\n

The general justification, anyhow, is solid: once you admit that the awards aren’t entirely an inwards-looking game that\u00a0the industry just plays among itself, and\u00a0instead you acknowledge that some non-zero fraction of the beer-buying public also gives a damn about them, then some<\/i> kind of gatekeeping obligation kicks right in. It admittedly wouldn’t make the top million in a list of the world’s most-pressing problems, but beer producers have a longrunning habit of fudging the terminology around styles and processes when it suits them, and it really does get in the way of wider and deeper public knowledge which, in turn, presents an obstacle to more people more-easily finding more beers they’ll love. As people at the geekier end of the spectrum \u2015 if not outright bending the needle on the nerd detector \u2015 it’s all too natural for us to assume that “everyone” can see through the nonsense of some marketing departments, but spend a little while bartending or hosting tastings (as I, you know, do) and you’ll see how depressingly common assumptions like “yellow = lager, black = Guinness, anything in-between = ale” are, and how they get in the way of people’s tastes evolving \u2015 in whatever direction and to whatever degree they feel like, of course. Misinformation is no good for nobody<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Malthouse<\/a>
A lifetime ago, in beer years \u2015 the Malthouse blackboard celebrating Tui’s 2009 trophy win (as a way to troll\u00a0me for\u00a0my birthday) plus\u00a0several bonus cute little anachronisms<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The tricky bit here is the two inevitable slippery slopes:<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a01) how strictly to police this \u2015 whether it really is just names and really is just outright contradictions that disqualify, or if\u00a0implications as to styles in the wider presentation of a beer also counts (such as the label text, marketing bumf, and sales material \u2015 where quite a few black lagers are gently implied to be, say, porters) \u2015 but more-pressingly, 2) why just trophies<\/em>, and not also medals and the mere participation in this process at all? The first question is of the kind that’s always hard to solve, but the second seems pretty plain; the same reasoning which now denies Tui its trophy should also hold back a medal.<\/p>\n

And in fairness, this nonsense\u00a0is<\/em> perhaps starting to fade. Monteith’s “Winter Ale”, a frequently-award-winning doppelbock, is now actually marketed as a doppelbock. This, remember, from the same conglomerate that so consistently misrepresents Tui.<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> These terms all mean something,\u00a0and it’s not hard to imagine a future in which they might be more dependably informative \u2015 which, again, would benefit just literally everyone. That the Brewers’ Guild has decided to more-carefully dole out the prestige of its trophies with this in mind is an\u00a0excellent<\/em> start.<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> But only a start.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last\u00a0weekend, a small army of judges assembled in Christchurch to assess a considerably-larger army of entries in the annual round of the local Brewers’ Guild Awards. We won’t know the results until\u00a0next weekend\u00a0but \u2015 SPOILER ALERT \u2015 Tui will\u00a0not\u00a0win the trophy for New Zealand styles. I don’t say this because I have any form as … Continue reading Trophies and truth-telling<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":20244,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2022\/07\/21\/medals-and-math-iii\/","url_meta":{"origin":17436,"position":0},"title":"Medals and math III \u2014 a bonanza of BGONZAs","author":"Phil","date":"July 21, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"It's beer awards night back home in New Zealand. I'll be tuning in as best I can from over here in Melbourne and doubtless obsessing over various weird little details and patterns once I've got the full results. As I've tried to make the case here before, I think there\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Beer awards"","block_context":{"text":"Beer awards","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/beer-awards\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Awards-night.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Awards-night.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Awards-night.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Awards-night.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Awards-night.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":19805,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2018\/09\/25\/medals-and-math-ii\/","url_meta":{"origin":17436,"position":1},"title":"Medals and math II \u2014 the numbers behind this year’s beer awards","author":"Phil","date":"September 25, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Last weekend gave us a fresh round of #BGONZAs \u2014 the Brewers' Guild of New Zealand Awards.\u00a0Continuing the new practice they started last year, the Guild has provided us not just with a list of who\u00a0won what, but a full accounting of who\u00a0tried to. So, like I did last time,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Beer awards"","block_context":{"text":"Beer awards","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/beer-awards\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Neon signage at the ParrotDog bar, Lyall Bay","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/ParrotDog-Nice.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/ParrotDog-Nice.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/ParrotDog-Nice.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/ParrotDog-Nice.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/ParrotDog-Nice.jpg?resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":19331,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2017\/10\/11\/medals-and-math\/","url_meta":{"origin":17436,"position":2},"title":"Medals and math \u2014 batting averages at the beer awards","author":"Phil","date":"October 11, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The latest round of the Brewers Guild of New Zealand Awards were announced this weekend and this year they've given us\u00a0more data than usual to play with. For the first time, the Guild has released information on what was\u00a0entered, as opposed to just telling us who\u00a0won, and I couldn't be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Beer awards"","block_context":{"text":"Beer awards","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/beer-awards\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Mural detail (Garage Project, 10 October 2017)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Garage-Project-mural-detail-fixed.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Garage-Project-mural-detail-fixed.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Garage-Project-mural-detail-fixed.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Garage-Project-mural-detail-fixed.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Garage-Project-mural-detail-fixed.jpg?resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":20292,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2022\/08\/19\/medals-and-math-iv\/","url_meta":{"origin":17436,"position":3},"title":"Medals and math IV \u2014 two in a row seems like it means something…","author":"Phil","date":"August 19, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"CORRECTION \u2014 the original version of this post incorrectly said that 'Chance, Luck & Magic' was the overall Champion Beer for the second year running. It wasn't; Burkes Brewing 'Unforgiven' Porter won in 2021. Thanks to Michael Donaldson for noticing and letting me know. The data here is unaffected, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Beer awards"","block_context":{"text":"Beer awards","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/beer-awards\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"An opened bottle of Garage Project's 'Chance, Luck & Magic 2021', just out of focus, laying on its side on a wooden bench in front of a red brick wall. 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