New York International Beer Competition Set For February 10th 2013!

We are excited to announce the 2nd Annual New York International Beer Competition will be held on February 10th 2013 at the 3 West Club located across from the world famous Rockefeller Center. Brands will be able to fax and now submit their products online using a solution similar to the one we used for the New York International Wine Competition and New York International Spirits Competition. Brands will be instructed to send their products to our climate controlled warehouse to be stored and delivered for the competition.

Our friend and beer pioneer Ray Deter of d.b.a. of New York and New Orleans was one of my first judges at the New York International Spirits Competition. Ray was fully supportive of this new beer competition and was to be a judge. To honor him we are donating $5 from each submission to his childeren education fund. This is our way of giving back to a great person.

We are very excited to extend the invitation to you to submit in our competition. Please allow me to explain how we judge in our competitions and our philosophy.

1. This is a TRADE ONLY judging competition. All of the judges are trade buyers. They are your fellow Retail Store Buyers, Beer focused restaurants, Beverage Directors, Distributors, Importers etc.…It is our belief that a trade buyer truly knows what a consumer wants and what will sell through. Otherwise it sits in their inventory.

2. Judges will be judging the beer blindly by its category ie..American Style Wheat Beer and then by its actual retail price. On their sheet they will know whether Beer #4 retails for $7 a 6 pack while Beer #8 retails for $12. The buyer as well as the consumer make informed buying decisions based upon price.

3. Once all the beers in its category and price range are tasted…the judging panel will decide as a group if the individual spirit is deserving of a medal. Bronze means you will buy it, Silver you really like it, Gold you love it and Double Gold is absolutely amazing based upon its category and price. Our staff will then immediately inform you which beer won the medal to make sure your tasting notes match up. As a backup all the bottles are labeled with its numerical code which matches the submissions on your tasting sheet. In case of any questions or concerns we will always repour the sample in case the judges believe the beer was incorrectly submitted in the wrong category by the brand.

4. We do not identify which beers did not win as this process is still a subjective process. Only the winners are identified.

5. We are not a Medal Factory where everyone gets a medal. This year around 40% of the spirits who submitted won a medal and only one Double Gold medal awarded. The wine competition recently awarded medals to only 20% of the wines submitted.

6. If no beer in its category is worthy of a medal then no one gets a medal in that category. We don’t automatically give out Gold, Silver Bronze medals in each category. There will be instances for example where you may only award one Silver medal and no other medals in that category and price range.

7. All of our judges are volunteers and we do not pay our judges. We don’t want there to be any misperception or taint on the results of our competition. It is critical to us that we run a clean competition with the appropriate safeguards.

8. No one on the competition staff including the founder Adam Levy will be judging in the competition. Even though qualified to do this…he does not want to influence any of the judging process.

We are primarily be inviting trade buyers from the New York Metro area from NJ, Westchester, Long Island, Southern CT and of course NYC.