KIBAs judges choose the three best beers that meet the award criteria for each category: Gold, Silver and Bronze. However, awards are not guaranteed, and if there is no beer that meets the award criteria, there may be no winner for respective gold, silver, and bronze awards. For example, only silver and bronze might get awarded, but not gold.
GOLD
SILVER
BRONZE
All Korea International Beer Award entries must be commercially available, fermented malt beverages conforming to the trade understanding of “beer” (see "Beer Eligibility" section below) brewed by a permitted commercial brewery. “Commercially available” means available for sale at retail at the time of registration.
All entry beers and breweries must follows the eligibility rules below.
* Breweries in planning, homebrewers, and other breweries not meeting these criteria are not eligible to enter.
Not eligible: Mead, cider, spirits, hard soda, hard water, and flavored malt beverages including kombucha and most shandies and radlers are not eligible to be entered in Korea International Beer Award.
The KIBA judging session will be held for two days, just before the Korea International Beer Expo and Conference. Judges are not allowed to evaluate their own product or any product they are involved with. All beer will be judged by about 50 internationally / domestically experienced judges appointed by the KIBA organizer and each beer will be blind tasted by at least 5 judges. Through a comprehensive discussion within a judging group, the winner will be decided for each category. All judges will use the scoresheets provided by KIBA. Participants can receive the scoresheets filled with judging comments after the competition. Judges play several important roles in KIBA. Judges will not only determine the winning beers that accurately meet the award criteria, but also provide participants with useful feedback to improve their beer quality.