RateBeer Best Awards

For our summaries, a particular emphasis was placed on tastings made in the last year with best new brewer awards ranging back from January 2018. Additionally, brewpubs, bottle shops, restaurants and bars from around the world were awarded prizes. Cheers to all the winners and to everyone who keeps the world of craft beer growing as a fun, cooperative community devoted to artfulness and excellence. Over 100 RateBeer regional administrators verified results.

The world of beer has changed drastically in the seventeen years since we first started sharing our RateBeer Best results. It’s not just the number of brewers that have increased, but also the number of beers brewed by all of these great brewers that has skyrocketed. As such, the process for compiling data for top beers has transformed. Comprehensive, quality results are our goal and we have shifted the focus towards top breweries to reflect this. To put this in perspective, one of our admins has recently pointed out that it took 8 years and 11 months to add the first 100k beers, but only 11 months to add the last 100k beers.

RATEBEER BEST IS A LEADING CONSUMER REVIEW LED BEER AWARDS PROGRAM
The award ceremony's rich seventeen-year history, millions of reviews, global participation, near-comprehensive assessment, commercial relevance and hundreds of regional expert administrators uniquely qualify RateBeer Best as one of the world's premier commercial beer awards program.

PROVEN MARKET IMPACT
RateBeer Best has catapulted breweries from obscure aficionado fascination to international renown, from the brink of shuttering to stunning commercial success, and from slow uncertain beginnings to well-financed expansions.

TRULY WORLDWIDE
Despite the majority of reviewers and beers being American, the community is enriched by many of RateBeer's top 10 raters being from outside the United States with the top beers hailing from an increasing array of countries spanning the globe.

EXTREMELY LARGE
RateBeer Best is one of the most comprehensive beer competitions in the world -- more than a half million beers from over 27,000 brewers worldwide were tallied.

EXPERIENCED REVIEWERS
RateBeer is home to the most experienced beer critics in the world with FOUR HUNDRED SIXTY SEVEN master beer tasters having over 4,000 full reviews. Additionally the world record holder for complete beer reviews, RateBeer's Jan Bolvig of VestJylland, Denmark has over 52,000 beer reviews to his credit. Furthermore, RateBeer is also home to countless Certified Cicerones, Beer Judge Certification Program-certified reviewers, Great American Beer Festival and Great British Beer Festival judges.

REAL COMMERCIAL SAMPLES
Unlike other beer contests, the emphasis was largely placed on tasting commercial samples -- not special batches prepared for festivals. Additionally, most beers were not tasted in large flights, allowing a more reliable and accurate account of the beer.

Press contact: Tiffany Waldron, Consumer and Brand Marketing Manager, tif@ratebeer.com