THE GIST
Allagash White is widely considered one of the best examples of the Belgian Witbier style in the world. As of the start of this year, it had earned 12 medals through the Brewers Association’s Great American Beer Festival competition and its World Beer Cup (WBC). White is the first commercial example for the style listed by the internationally recognized Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP). It is also beloved by industry professionals, and consumers have made it one of the best-selling beers in the country.
On May 5, as the 2022 WBC medalists were announced, White received its 13th medal. Oddly, it was the only award-winner among 102 entrants in the Belgian-Style Witbier category. Even stranger, it received a bronze. Out of 103 categories, Belgian Wit was the only one that didn’t include a gold or silver medalist.
Why the anomaly? Like any good mystery, the answer isn’t evident—and nobody’s talking.
WHY IT MATTERS
On the scale from internet curiosity to Sherlock Holmes case, this conundrum hardly requires Scotland Yard. But it does register as an oddity, one that’s amplified by the collective love for Allagash White as a standard-bearer beer and the flagship of one of America’s leading craft breweries. The WBC markets itself as “the world’s most prestigious international beer competition,” and in 2022 had the most entrants in its history. In all, 307 medals were awarded to professional brewers from Argentina to Poland to the U.S., two short of the assumed total of 309.
“It is perplexing to me as well why only a bronze medal was awarded in the Witbier category, but as a veteran judge, it’s not my place to question the other judges regarding their decisions,” says Owen Ogletree, who’s been a BJCP judge for 18 years. Ogletree was among this year’s judges at WBC, but wasn’t involved in the Witbier category. (He says White is “a wonderful example” of the style, for what it’s worth.) “Apparently, the final-round judges were not impressed with the samples, apart from the beer from Allagash.”
The WBC’s judging guidelines are very clear that the competition is not required to award a top-three best beers for every category. This is addressed on the Cup’s Award Philosophy page: “Judges may choose not to designate any awards in a category if all beers entered in that category are significantly out of style or have major defects.” The reasoning goes on to specify that “judges may recognize a beer as a silver or bronze award winner; yet not grant a gold award.” The page stops short of explaining why.
To make matters more opaque, the Brewers Association is staying mum on the matter. The trade organization wouldn’t provide a reason why two medals were left out altogether, and declined to make event or competition organizers available for an interview. Instead, a spokesperson pointed back to the Award Philosophy page and clarified that the decision was made by the judges, not the BA.
“It all comes down to whether or not judges feel the beers at hand fall in/outside the respective style guidelines,” Meg Weldon, associate PR director for Backbone Media, the BA’s PR agency, said in an email. “When judges decide that no beer in the final flight meets the criteria for a given level of award, they are duty bound to not make that award.”
Weldon did offer one clue: WBC judges do not use numerical scoring. According to Advanced Cicerone and National BJCP Beer Judge Jen Blair, beer competitions sometimes set strict limits on a numerical score a beer needs to qualify for a medal. That’s not the case here.
The situation is an enigma for Blair. She didn’t judge this year’s WBC, but she was in the crowd for the announcement that Allagash had only earned bronze. She says “a somewhat good-natured ‘boo’” rolled through the crowd.
“My immediate reaction was, ‘Oh, shit, Allagash White is one of the best Witbiers, and it got third,’” she says. “There was definitely a visceral reaction from the crowd.”
That wasn’t the only public arena for swift feedback. In the aftermath of the medal announcements, Twitter was set alight with hot takes. How could White—considered the best Belgian Wit among beer’s influencerati, and an assumed medalist in any international beer competition—finish third in a one-horse race?
The tenor of the discourse was neatly summed up by Chicago-based writer and PR rep Andrés Muñoz. “If you tried … 102 beers and only one beer is worthy of a medal, it’s gold,” he tweeted. “Doing dumb shit like this makes your competition seem fucking dumb.”
But as Minneapolis beer fan Adam Sjogren pointed out, there’s precedent for this state of affairs:
The WBC first ran in 1996, and in its 25-year history, this scenario has happened dozens of times, though decreasingly over the years.
The Belgian-style categories have seen particularly persnickety judging across the 13 WBCs: this marks the 11th time that no gold has been given in a Belgian-style category (Belgian-Style Abbey Ale in 1996; Belgian-Style Pale Ale in 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2008; Belgian-Style Dubbel in 1998; Belgian-Style Lambic in 2002; Belgian-Style Pale Strong Ale in 2006; and Belgian-Style Flanders/Oud Bruin or Oud Red Ale in 2008 and 2014).
No awards were given in 2020, as the WBC was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Blair surmises that White’s failure to land a gold may be due to the competition’s constantly changing judging makeup. Because there are new people judging these competitions each time with so much representation from all over the world, it makes sense that a wide swath of trained judges may not completely agree with fans on social media. Even still, the mystery of why White was stuck with a bronze medal remains.
“In my expert opinion, Allagash White is a fantastic beer and is truly an exemplar of the style, but if you’ve got people from different countries who don’t have the same exposure to Allagash White, we can’t escape those biases,” Blair explains. “As judges, we try to be as objective as possible, but we’re not lab instruments.”
Despite the tongue-in-cheek controversy, a bronze medal at the World Beer Cup is a footnote in what is shaping up to be another banner year for White. Along with praise from Ogletree, Blair, and others, it’s earned plenty of love from the American public. White has increased its sales in chain retail stores every year for a decade. Despite the fact that the beer is sold in only 20 states, it’s still a top-100 SKU, with numbers on par with Dogfish Head Craft Brewery’s 60 Minute IPA and Founders Brewing Co.’s Centennial IPA.
Allagash, seemingly less bothered by the slight than incensed fans and befuddled judges, declined to comment for this story—perhaps content to let its past medals and current financial performance do the talking.
Words by Jerard Fagerberg