Barcelona Beer Challenge 2016 - Stats

Two months ago I wrote about the 2016 edition of the Barcelona Beer Festival. Today we are exactly eight weeks before its celebration on the weekend of March 4th to 6th. Hence, you can expect that I will do some promoting here in the blog. I promise to make it interesting, though.

It was in that same introductory entry in November that I talked about one of the main innovations for this year: Barcelona Beer Challenge (BBC), a beer contest. Today there's just a week left before closing the registration period, and we are very pleased with a participation level that complies with our more optimistic expectations. There is a good representation of beers from different geographic points, as well as a wide range of brewing styles according to the Beer Judge Certification Program standards.

To be more specific, the profile of participants is mainly the one of a young microbrewery, almost on par between domestic and foreign, most of which come from places such as Italy, Belgium and Canada. As for styles, 30 out of the 34 macro BJCP styles today are covered with at least one beer registered.

No big surprises, the styles with more beer registered -more than 6 within its category- are the following:

• 18. Pale American Ale.
• 20. American Porter and Stout.
• 21. IPA.
• 25. Strong Belgian Ale.
• 26. Trappist Ale.
• 34. Specialty Beer.

With a nice -personal- surprise with the registration of Fruit Beers, the following styles are represented, as of now, with a range of 4 to 6 beers:

• 13. Brown British Beer.
• 17. Strong British Ale.
• 24. Belgian Ale.
• 29. Fruit Beer.
• 30. Spiced Beer.
• 33. Wood Beer.

The rest of styles have a range of 1 to 3 beers registered, except for those that, as I've stated before, fall within the 4 categories without any beer registered; namely:

• 3. Czech Lager.
• 4. Pale Malty European Lager.
• 27. Historical Beer.
• 31. Alternative Fermentables Beer.

Categories 27 and 31 are less common, but it is surprising to find no Czech Lagers, nor any Helles to enter category 4. Furthermore, other common styles such as German Wheat Beer or American Amber Ales seem to have very little representation.

In any case, there is one week left to fill these categories, while increasing the participation in other styles to add competitiveness to the contest. Hopefully, some breweries that have so far not registered their beers will find their motivation to do so. encouraged to register their beers.

For further information on the BBC, visit the official website, or like the Facebook page to be able to follow the entire contest process. Remember that the judges will evaluate beers on February 6th and 7th, and the winners will be awarded on March 6th, within the framework of parallel events of the Barcelona Beer Festival.

Salut i birra!