You've probably seen breweries touting the medals and prizes they and their products have won. There are a lot of competitions out there, some more competitive than others.

 

Some are like the old World Beer Championship medal factory, a beautiful boondoggle. Breweries sent their beers and a check for each beer (about $150 each), and after a decent interval, the WBC sent back a medal certificate for each beer entered in the "competition." Every beer won a medal; I guess the competition was to see what kind you'd get.

 

There's the Brewing Industry International Awards, one of the longest-running competitions, at over 110 years old. This British competition is well-respected, but a bit industry-oriented: the awards are in a few broad categories – "Ales," "Lagers," "Dark Milds, Stouts, & Porters" and maybe three more – which are then split up into bands by alcohol strength. Those Brits: it's all about the buzz.

 

The competition that American brewers generally bank on, though, is the Great American Beer Festival, the GABF, held every year around the end of September in Denver. Since 1987, they've bestowed gold, silver, and bronze medals in a growing number of categories: in 1987, there were 12 of them. This year, medals were awarded in 69 categories like Belgian-style Sour Ale, Cellar or Unfiltered Beer, Experimental Beer, and my favorite, Other Strong Ale or Lager.

 

It gets a little silly sometimes, these categories. They get painfully politically correct – or more properly, zymurgically correct, from the word "zymurgy," meaning fermentation chemistry in brewing, a geek's word for making "brewing" sound more important. As if it needed it: "brewing" makes beer. How much more important could it get?

 

But the geeks at the GABF HQ get icky-picky precise over the whole thing, coming up with names that sometimes aren't even recognizable. For instance: "American-style Specialty Lager." What's that? Well, "American-style" with these people is usually geekspeak for "we threw in a shitload of hops," so you might think that this is something like a blazingly hoppy pilsner, or a dry-hopped doublebock, which is what passes for brilliant innovation in this sometimes heavy-handed creative community. Not quite. For a hint, try a partial list of winners in this category: Olde English 800, Mickey's, St. Ides, Colt 45. That's right, it's 40-Land, malt liquor. Wouldn't "Malt Liquor" have been simpler...and more honest?

 

Here's another ass-painfully precise one: "German-Style Kölsch / Köln-Style Kölsch." Now, kölsch (round up your lips like an "o" and say "kilsch"; that's close) is an easily drinkable golden beer that originated in Cologne, or as the Germans who live there call the town, Köln (same lip thing, and say "kurln"). American brewpub brewers have been making kölsch-like beers for years – it's very popular in Washington, DC – but that really pisses off the Germans, for the same reason Californians making sparkling wine and calling it "champagne" pisses off the French.

All the more reason to do it, I say, but the GABF people are friends to all brewers, so they let the Germans know that we know we're just making beer "in the style" of their beloved kölsch. And, maybe, to differentiate it from all that cheap Bulgarian-style kölsch that's been coming in over the border, I guess.

 

Don't get me wrong: I love the GABF. I love it so much that I've compiled all 19 years of winners in a big database that I can flex and weave in a manner very similar to the stuff the Chief Angry Troll and the rest of the Troll Horde do with football numbers. I'm happy to share the results with you: a four-foot tall stein filled with the frosty golden nectar of knowledge called the Cold, Hard Beer Facts.

 

A little fun stuff first. Brewers like to muck with the names of their beers, particularly brewpub brewers. In 19 years, the longest name ever on a medal-winning beer was that of the 2003 bronze winner in the German-style Wheat Ale category from the Great Dane in Madison, WI (a place I know and love and highly recommend): John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt Dunkeldoppelhefe. Hail to the cheeseheads!

Inspired by this, I took a moment just to cruise through the years to pick out the names I found the most amusing:

Okay, enough fun, I promised you numbers and facts. We'll start with a unique winner. I'm sure you remember Pete's Wicked Ale. Aside from all its other accomplishments – like having the bull terrier kicked off its label by the late, lamented Spuds McKenzie – Pete's Wicked Ale pulled off something last year that no other beer had ever done before or will likely ever do again (thanks to more vigilant – or just embarrassed – judges). Pete's Wicked Ale won a silver in the English-style Brown Ale category; not surprising, since it's a brown ale, and a good one. But Pete's also won gold in the Scottish-style Ale category that same year, the only time a beer has ever won two medals in the same year. As the Pete's brewmaster told me later, there wasn't anything in the rules that forbade simultaneous entries, and the categories had enough overlap to allow it. That's playing the game.

 

How about the biggest numbers: most medals won by a single brewery. Ask most people who are familiar with the GABF, and they'll tell you Anheuser-Busch. True, A-B's won an impressive 61 medals over the years, almost twice as many as the leading craft brewer, Alaskan Brewing. But if you dig into the medals listings, and start cherry-picking the beers listed under brand names that are no longer independent, and check the dates when they were purchased, you find that the winner of the most medals is actually Pabst, with a significantly higher total of 74, over 20 percent more than A-B. Not bad for a brewery that doesn't even own a brewery any more.

 

Pabst also holds the record for the most medals won in one year by a brewery. That may surprise some folks, since the GABF geeks just announced this year that Sandlot Brewery, the little Coors-owned brewpub at Coors Field in Denver, set the record for medals won in one year, when they took seven. That's very impressive indeed, until you realize that Pabst won eight medals in 2000.

 

But I did say "Coors-owned," didn't I? So how many did Coors win this year? Sure enough, Sandlot's daddy won an additional two medals (for Keystone Light and Coors Light), so that makes nine, one more than Pabst won in 2000. Which would make the nut, except that Pabst outdid themselves last year: they won nine medals in 2004. It's a tie.

 

Most medals won by a single beer? Geeks will not be surprised to learn that it's Alaskan Smoked Porter, the deliciously smoky nectar brewed in Juneau from alder-smoked malt. Alaskan Smoked Porter has taken thirteen medals, six of them gold. New Belgium Abbey is tied for second with ten medals, also with six golds (which ties it with Alaskan Smoked Porter for the most gold medals won by a single beer, by the way), and that isn't surprising either: it's an excellent beer. What is surprising is the beer that has it tied for second: Genesee Cream Ale. Genny Cream was the first keg I ever bought, and I'm not surprised at all.

 

Where do the medals go? The city that's won the most is the one that Schlitz made famous: Milwaukee has pulled in 70 medals over the years. Denver is second, with 65, St. Louis third, with 61 (hmmm, wonder what breweries won those).

 

Interestingly, though, if you add in medals won in towns within the reach of Denver's city bus system (i.e., Boulder and Golden), the total shoots up to 137, almost twice as many as Milwaukee. You could probably beat that total by agglomerating the entire San Francisco Bay area...but if you did, a similar expanded area based on greater Denver would include Ft. Collins, where New Belgium and a couple other excellent brewers are, which would boost the total over 170.

 

Why does Denver win so many medals? There are some great breweries there, to be sure: Left Hand/Tabernash, Great Divide, the Bull & Bush, and the amazing Sandlot, just to name a few. But I can't help wondering if it has anything to do with the closeness of the breweries that can pretty much hand-carry their beers to the festival collection point. An unfair permanent home-field advantage, looks like to me, given that the GABF is always in Denver.

 

I'm not suggesting that the fix is in. These tastings are done blind: judges don't know what beers they are tasting and evaluating, and I'm convinced it's a good blinding process. It's not ice dancing. What I am suggesting is that judges tend to like – and think of as normal and proper – the beers they drink on a regular basis.

 

So enjoy that gold- or silver- or bronze-medal winning bottle of A Beer Named Bob or Sour Prick suds. But just remember, those awards aren't always what they seem.