The San Diego Beer News Awards

Brewing competitions like the world-famous Great American Beer Festival (GABF) and locally significant San Diego International Beer Competition recognize excellence in craftsmanship while providing excitement and entertainment for brewers and beer fans alike. So, too, do best-of and social-media polls. January will mark the arrival of a brand-new competition, the first annual San Diego Beer News Awards. Developed exclusively for San Diego brewing companies and designed to provide a true representation of the best of the best, it will allow fans and industry employees to nominate and vote on the best beers, breweries and staffers throughout the county.

Starting Monday, January 4, San Diego Beer News will poll beer fans, asking for their nominations in one beer-style or brewery-centric category per weekday through the end of the month. Those nominations may be cast as replies to San Diego Beer News’ corresponding Facebook and Instagram posts in accordance with rules and guidelines that will be presented when those nominations are solicited. The following is the order in which nominations will be sought:

• January 4-8: IPAs and Hoppy Beers
• January 11-15: Lagers and Assorted Ales
• January 18-22: Sour, Strong and Barrel-Aged Beers
• January 25-29: Service, Décor, Collaboration and Community

At the end of the month, fan nominations will be collected and made available in a pair of surveys that will then be made available on the San Diego Beer News website from February 1-12. One of the surveys will be designed for fans to cast their votes, while the other survey will be designed specifically for brewing industry members. That survey will be regulated so that:

• Brewery employees’ identities are verified by email address (or a secondary means in lieu of an address)
• Brewery employees may only fill out the survey once and, in doing so, may not vote for their own brewery or beers their company produces

To date, similar San Diego-only competitions have consisted mostly of online polls where breweries rally fans, encouraging them to “stuff the ballot box,” so to speak, or contests where a panel of judges sample and score beers. These contests are fun and certainly have their places, but they don’t need to be replicated. The San Diego Beer News Awards are designed to be something different—an interactive competition that:

• Everyone can be a part of and have fun participating in
• Has rules and oversight in place to provide verifiable results
• Produces winners that are truly representative of fans’ and industry members’ opinions versus the result of a flurry of social-media activity or the opinions of a small group following a beer-tasting session
• Can serve as a for-San-Diegans-by-San-Diegans GABF of sorts; a top-notch annual affair our region can look forward to, complete with a presentation of awards that will be virtual this time in light of the pandemic, but hopefully evolve into an annual physical event moving forward

To participate in the San Diego Beer News Awards, simply follow San Diego Beer News on Facebook and Instagram, and be sure to check in throughout the month of January and the voting period in February so your nominations and votes can be recorded. In the meantime, start thinking about the beers and breweries of the past year that have stood out for you. We will want to make sure your favorites make it onto the surveys and into the ballot box.

A big thank-you goes out to the San Diego Beer News Awards’ banner sponsor, Yakima Chief Hops, for supporting San Diego brewers and helping kick 2021 off with something new and exciting for beer fans and the industry alike!