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World Beer Awards 2024 tasting: First round

02.07.24
Judging for the World Beer Awards 2024 has officially begun! The first round of tasting commenced this last week at Norwich’s famous Norwich City Football Stadium. Our expert judges from around the world gathered to taste, inspect and discuss some exceptional and potentially award-winning beers.

Hundreds of products were tasted throughout the day, but this only marks the very beginning of the competition. There are still two more rounds to go and with entries for the World Beer Awards increasing every year, it’s proving to be a challenge for our judges to decide on the award frontrunners.

For this round of tasting, our judges will choose both medallists and country winners for each category and style. The country winners will then head to the second tasting round in August this year. They will be tasted against each other to see which is the best in style. Finally, those best in style will move on to the final judging on the 8 August to compete for the World's Best Title.

We spoke to the judges and quizzed them on their experience during the tastings, their favourite things about the awards so far and their advice for those unsure on what an award could mean for their brand.

We asked Cheryl Cade, judge and beer sommelier, what surprised her the most during the tastings. She replied: “The range of high-quality beers out there. We’ve seen some exceptional high quality within the imperial stats but also in the low ABVs. Low ABV has really changed over the years, so much so you do have to do a double take when trying it.”

We then asked the judges if they had a message for anyone who was unsure if entering the World Beer Awards was the best route for them. Markus Raupach, our German chair of judges, beer writer and sommelier, commented: “The most import thing is you get visibility. If you get an award, then you will go into stores and people will see your brands on the shelves and try your beers. You’ll have new markets and new customers. For what you get, it’s a very inexpensive thing as well as a little bit of a quality assessment—if we rank your beers high, you know you’re doing good!”

Pete Brown, global chair of judges and beer writer, offered his thoughts on the quality of products this year:

“Sometimes judging can be disheartening—occasionally you’ll receive a product where you think ‘why have people entered this?’ Thankfully, we haven’t had any of those so far this year, everything’s been quite close to style—when we look at our scores, they’re all quite similar. When you’re judging a competition like this, you’re judging the beers blind. You don’t know who made it, you don’t know what country it comes from but with every competition, when all scores have been submitted, you taste a beer that makes you say, ‘I need to know what that beer is!’

Pete continued his thoughts on the quality of products so far when we asked him what one word he would use to describe the World Beer Awards: “Inspiring. All of us here are beer professionals and sometimes we as brewers, educators and writers lose sight of why we’re doing something. At the end of the day, it’s all about the beer. When you taste inspiring beers, you remember why you got involved in the first place. When you’re sitting around the table with other judges and you all taste a special beer at the same time, everyone lights up—it’s a great thing to experience with others, you don’t get many moments like that!”

Winners of the World Beer Awards are set to be announced between the 7 and 8 August later this year on the World Beer Awards website and on our social channels. Entrants will also be updated via email.

For more information on the World Beer Awards 2024, head to the World Beer Awards homepage for more information and results from previous years. Also make sure to check out our recent article on Everything you need to know about the World Beer Awards, which includes an introductory word from global chair of judges Pete Brown.

Visit our Flickr album for photos of the tasting event.
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