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If you’re a brewery and you want to be part of this year’s Great American Beer Festival, registration begins TODAY. But be aware that the Brewers Association has completely changed things up in hopes of avoiding the difficulties that occurred last year.
Here’s the deal…
The registration period starts today – June 17 and extends through June 26. And this year, the BA will accept every brewery into the competition portion of the festival unless there are more than 1,400 that apply, which in spite of the multitude of new breweries that have come on-line seems reasonable, as 750 breweries tried to enter last year.
As a result of this revised policy, the number of beers that each brewery can submit for judging will necessarily decline significantly from last year’s number of ten per brewery.
According to the BA “the number of beer entries allowed per brewery will be based on doing the math of the number of breweries that registered during the sign-up period and the pre-determined capacity of beers that we can successfully judge that year.”
Denver’s WestWord blog (whose writers do great work covering Colorado’s craft beer scene) explain this better than we ever could:
“In other words, if the BA determines that it has enough people to judge 5,000 beers, and 1,000 breweries register, then each brewery will be able to submit five beers. If 2,500 breweries register, however, each one will only be able to submit two beers.
This year, the BA set the number of beers that can be judged at 4,675, a 7.5 percent increase from the previous year. Some of the breweries who submitted beers won’t be pouring at the festival, while some of the breweries who are pouring won’t be judged.”
The amount of breweries invited to pour beer at the Colorado Convention Center this year has increased as well. Last year, there were 624 breweries sharing their wares in the hall, and this year, the BA is saying there will be space for about 655, with each brewery limited to presenting a maximum of five beers total.
The Brewers Association explains it this way:
“In the event that the number of competition entries allowed per brewery are four or less, each brewery with a festival booth may pour one additional beer over the number entered into the competition. No brewery may exceed five beers at their booth. The only exception is for breweries that sponsor the event. Sponsor breweries are allowed to pour up to ten beers at their festival booth.”
2013’s one-day registration was brutal. More than 1,000 breweries attempted to register for about 600 slots at around the same time, causing the server to (not surprisingly) crash and many breweries to be left out in the cold. The Brewers Association, who’ve been charged with managing the growth of this truly difficult beast, has dedicated themselves to devising a plan that would eliminate last year’s problems, and today’s extended registration process is part of these thoughtful revisions.
The Brewers Association has clearly put much thought into all these changes and has worked hard to ensure that this year’s registration process is not only fair and equitable – but also works well for the brewing community.
Now it’s on you. Like we said, registration begins today.
