<body><div>Written By: The Gnarly Gnome10/20/24<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1ugr3e_0wEdyR0b00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1ugr3e_0wEdyR0b00" width="580" height="270" ></figure>This month has been a big one for Cincinnati breweries on the medal front. Winning or at least competing for medals and awards has always been a way for craft breweries to showcase the products they make and are proud of and stand out in a very crowded market. How important winning those medals is to the day-to-day business can be debated (and I’ll share my thoughts in just a bit). Still, regardless of how you feel about their importance, we should always acknowledge and highlight it.This month was host to both the Great American Beer Festival and the Ohio Craft Brewer’s Cup – two very different competitions that I want to talk about.<h2>Great American Beer Festival</h2>GABF is the biggest festival and competition that happens in craft beer. A medal in this yearly competition in Denver is one of the most prestigious in the industry and a challenging task. Thousands upon thousands of beers enter this (around 9,000 this year), and it’s tough to stand out in a crowd that big.With that being said, this year Cincinnati tacked on three more medals to our total – which brings our total count of GABF medals to 49, tracing back to 1987 when Little Kings brought the very first one home to the city.Streetside – Black Cats – I want to start with Streetside because their Gold Medal is not only their first GABF award, it’s also the single gold that came back to Cincy this year. The beer is an English Brown Ale, which is a style that means a lot to owner/brewer Garrett Hickey from his time learning to brew in England. The beer is absolutely wonderful, and you can find it on tap at their brewery/taproom over on the east end of town a few times throughout the year.Brink – Moozie – Brink has never NOT won a medal at the Great American Beer Festival. That’s a ridiculous streak going back to 2017 and the longest-running streak in Ohio. Moozie is also the most award-winning beer in the city of Cincinnati, with (according to my count as of today) 14 different medals across different competitions. This beer deserves a spot in the Mount Rushmore of Cincinnati Beers, for sure!Wandering Monsters – Triple Chocolate Viator Obscura – A first-time win for a new brewery… this one feels great to see when it pops up on the screen during the awards ceremony. It’s easy to dismiss a place like Wandering Monsters as a “gimmick” with duckpin bowling, a barbecue restaurant sitting alongside the craft beer – but hopefully, this silences some of the naysayers and gets them to head out and belly up to see what they’re all about – because they’re cranking out some great beers!<h2>The Ohio Craft Brewer’s Cup</h2>This awards ceremony is different from GABF. A win here isn’t about standing out amongst 9,000 beers from across the country but getting recognition from people right here at home. A medal here is a sign that you’re doing something right – in your region, amongst your peers who drink your beer day to day.It shouldn’t come as too much of a shocker if you’ve been drinking the incredible beer that has bee coming out of Cincinnati, but in the last seven years, 128 medals have come back home to Cincy from this competition – with 27 of those coming from this year, alone.Here’s what happened at this years competition:Brink<ul><li>Lil Zoomie – Gold Medal</li><li>Calista – Gold Medal</li><li>Moozie – Gold Medal</li></ul>The Common Beer Company<ul><li>Murphys 26 – Silver Medal</li></ul>Listermann<ul><li>All For One – Silver Medal</li></ul>MadTree<ul><li>Best Large Brewery (greater than 15,000bbls)</li><li>The Great Pumpcan – Silver Medal</li><li>Seeing Colors – Bronze Medal</li><li>Skygazer – Gold Medal</li></ul>MPH<ul><li>French Connection – Bronze Medal</li></ul>Municipal Brew Works<ul><li>Recovery Red – Silver Medal</li><li>Mouthful – Bronze Medal</li></ul>Narrow Path<ul><li>Best Nano Brewery (less than 1,000bbls)</li><li>Path Blue Ribbon – Gold Medal</li><li>Missing Linck Honey Saison – Silver Medal</li><li>Essentia – Gold Medal</li><li>Firepit Wit – Silver Medal</li></ul>Sonder<ul><li>Eagle Light – Gold Medal</li><li>Voss – Silver Medal</li><li>Grodziske – Bronze Medal</li></ul>Third Eye<ul><li>Regional Brewery Of The Year (Southwest)</li><li>Best Small Brewery (Less than 5,000 but more than 1,000bbls)</li><li>Inner Sight – Bronze Medal</li><li>Jungle Eye on Dixie High – Gold Medal</li><li>Gettin’ Twisted – Gold Medal</li><li>Double Astral – Gold Medal</li><li>Higher Purpose – Bronze Medal</li></ul><h2>Does Any Of This Even Matter?</h2>I fully understand the debate here. Does winning a couple of medals drive any traffic into your taproom to spend money? I don’t know that it does. Heck, even for me, someone who absolutely loves when breweries win medals, it doesn’t change what I’m ordering too much in a taproom. I still order based on my mood, the season, or what I’m eating at the time.On the flip side of that, though, I can’t help but feel like the breweries in town who have won a ton of medals don’t get some sort of traffic out of it (I’m looking at places like Brink and Third Eye). Surely there are people who travel to Cincinnati and then realize that they have to stop at these places for a beer, right?But then I jump back to the fact that if we’re really crunching numbers – both MadTree and Rhinegeist have won more medals than Brink OR Third Eye have… so – that brings me back to square one.Does it matter? I think I’ll give it a solid – maybe, maybe not.<h2>The Takeaway</h2>I love seeing wins. I love seeing positive recognition for local breweries. I love when beers that I love get pointed out by other folks as something that should be noted by craft beer drinkers. It just sort of feels good. Right now, I find myself more and more often seeking out things that make me feel good – and for that. Celebrate.Enjoy the places you love, enjoy the beers you love, and whenever you get the chance, be loud about your love for something. Be Gnarly, Drink Local.</div></body>

Mountain View, CA

NewsBreak

Cincinnati Has More Hardware, And I Still Don’t Know If It Matters.

This month has been a big one for Cincinnati breweries on the medal front. Winning or at least competing for medals and awards has always been a way for craft breweries to showcase the products they make and are proud of and stand out in a very crowded market. How important winning those medals is to the day-to-day business can be debated (and I’ll share my thoughts in just a bit). Still, regardless of how you feel about their importance, we should always acknowledge and highlight it.