Competitions and judging update
Relaunch of the New and Improved SIBA Independent Beer Awards As you read this you may be about to go to, or even be sat within BeerX UK 2022. It’s the UK’s biggest beer and brewing trade event and the home of our SIBA National Independent Beer Awards – the culmination of 12 months of Regional competitions. The 2022 awards mark a turning point for SIBA beer competitions, as post-BeerX we will see the re-launch of SIBA’s Independent Beer Awards, with new beer style categories, an international style scoring system and a renewed judging process, including the introduction of experienced beer judge table captains. Our first ‘new look’ regional competition will take place next month at ‘Maltingsfest’, the new name for the much-loved Tucker’s Maltings Beer Festival in Newton Abbott, this year taking place from Thursday 21st to Saturday 23rd April. The festival will for the first time ever host the SIBA South West Independent Keg Beer Awards, alongside the South West’s Cask Beer Competition, putting into practice our brand new and improved keg beer awards categories. The process to get to this point has been thorough and taken place over the course of a number of years; it started in 2018 with a motion from the South East Region which passed at the National AGM, calling for SIBA to ‘undertake a fundamental review of the SIBA Beer Competitions category structure, with the aim of producing a more comprehensive, vibrant, representative and industry-leading structure.’ From there a thorough process of Member Brewery feedback and consultation - including review by the SIBA Competitions Committee, Board and Executive Board - refined the proposal into a practical and workable competitions structure which would place SIBA Independent Beer Awards in a position to be industry-leading in the UK.
Evolution on cask, revolution on keg Most breweries produce slightly different beers for keg than you do for cask, and as brewers you know certain international styles such as Lagers, Belgian beers, or American Double IPAs benefit from the added carbonation and cooler serve of keg dispense, whereas traditional British styles really shine on cask. SIBA’s cask and keg competitions need to closely align with the types of beers UK breweries are producing in cask and keg formats, and that’s exactly what the new categories do. Ultimately SIBA’s cask and keg competitions need to closely align with the types of beers UK breweries are producing in cask and keg formats, and that’s exactly what the new categories do: Giving more space for traditional British styles in the cask competition whilst massively expanding the range of international styles in the keg competition, reflecting the breadth of different beers British breweries are now producing.
You can see the new SIBA Independent Beer Awards categories that come in to place this year on page 61, starting with the SIBA South West competition in April. As was the process in the past each of these Awards categories contains a range of beer styles for you to choose from when entering your beers. For example the ‘British Dark Beers’ Award can be entered by Stouts, Porters, Brown Ales, Dark Bitters etc, and the newly created ‘Amber & Dark Lager’ keg category can be entered by everything from Czech Dark Lagers to Munich Dunkels. Simply select the beer you’re entering into that category from the drop down provided and judges will be made aware of what beer style they are judging and rate your beer according to the style guides provided, all of which are based on the newly launched 2022 BJCP style guides.
Neil Walker SIBA Head Of Comms and Interim Chair of Competitions Committee.
To achieve this, only small improvements were needed to the previous cask beer categories – such as removing the upper limit on cask IPA’s and renaming Session IPA to Session Pale Ale, as well as some small ABV banding tweaks to create better uniformity across the competition. On keg much more radical changes were needed and following a lengthy process of consultation and refinement a full shake-up of the keg categories has been introduced, implementing the changes largely as proposed by the South East Region. The same categories developed for the keg beer competition are also being implemented in the bottle and can competition.
www.siba.co.uk | SIBA Independent Brewer | Spring 2022
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