The most successful year of Copa Cervezas de América

A great get together | In its seventh year, the international tournament that took place from 8 to 13 October 2018 in Santiago de Chile provided a platform to share knowledge with the general public, to bring people together, create culture and encourage responsible consumption habits, offering beer style workshops, tours to breweries and specialized bars.

After seven editions, one of the annual challenges for the organizers is always: “how can we surprise the attendees with something different?” The answer this year was to collaborate with the beer community, creating Santiago Beer Week, which in the future will shift and visit different cities every year, strengthening different beer scenes.

The 2018 Winners

New winners were crowned and surprises took place in the Latin American Beer Tournament, and this year 1685 beers and 394 breweries from 18 countries participated.

In its most successful year, the renowned international judges of Copa Cervezas de América 2018 got to know their favorite beers after three intense days of tasting, awarding a total of 170 medals: 47 gold, 55 silver, and 68 bronze, in addition to the classic awards such as the Best Brewery and Best Beer for countries that sent more than 100 samples.

Like every year, since 2011, the structure of our judging panel was fundamental, and in 2018, Copa was made up by renowned judges and speakers from the world beer industry, fruit of a great production undertaking. This year, on Chilean soil, the challenge to participate was accepted by Stephen Beaumont, Lorenzo Dabove, Luc de Raedemaeker, Gabriela Montandon (Fermentis), Blaze Ruud (Yakima Chief Hops), Gary Glass, Pete Slosberg, Fabian Clark (Muntons) and Bruno Martínez (Mahou), among others.

The Awards Ceremony this year became a great party that ended Santiago Beer Week with music, brewers from every country, and a large variety of beers to celebrate the winners in 2018.

The 2018 medal count was led by Brazil with a total of 67 awards and 12 gold medals; whereas Argentina received 42 medals, but won the most gold with 15 medals; the United States won 5 gold medals, for a total of 13; Costa Rica won 7 medals, 5 of which were gold; the host, Chile, won 18 medals, 4 of which were gold; other winners were Mexico with 3, Ecuador with 2 medals, and Peru with one medal.

The awards didn’t just stay there. The most surprising were the categories of Best Brewery of the Americas and Best Beer of the Americas, where Brazil proudly won both, with Wäls – Cerveja Arte and La Culotte De La Duchesse from Cervecería Artesanal Pratinha.

The most outstanding part of it all, according to the President and Founder of Copa, Daniel Trivelli, is that each country displayed their beer identity. “What was extraordinary about the event was its inclusive profile, with brewers from Chile and abroad taking part, in addition to the general public, thanks to the tours to breweries and specialized beer bars of the country. Together we build more and better beer culture.”

Activities

Suppliers Expo and Brewers Conference
The activities for brewers kicked off on Monday 8th October with a busy Industry Suppliers Expo, where the attendees were able to meet and do business with great Chilean and International brands such as Muntons (UK), coorganizer of Copa, Rastal (Germany), Fermentis (France), Mahou San Miguel (Spain), Patagonia Malt (Maltexco, Chile), Krones (Germany), TEQ Chile, Lallemand (Canada) and Yakima Chief Hops (USA).

For their part, the Brewers Conference took place in parallel to the Expo and was a success, demonstrating how every year Copa surprises with big personalities from the world beer scene. This is proof that throughout the history of this event, without a doubt, this edition contributed to consecrate this encounter that encourages the growth of beer as world culture.

With a capacity for 200 people, the majority of the conferences were full of attendees interested in getting to know the experiences and stories that the experts had to share.

For example, Lorenzo Dabove (Kuaska), gave an intimate and passionate talk, due to the fact that he is one of the fervent protagonists of the resurrection of Lambic beers, and achieved in putting them once again on the map of world beer. He took the audience through a romantic journey with moving images of the family that works at the Cantillon Brewery in Anderlecht, Belgium, his personal friends, who have rescued the production of Lambics with traditional methods. It was an impassioned presentation, in which Kuaska affectionatly shared his stories and anecdotes about this classic beer style.

In general, beyond the engaging content, this year’s edition recovered the spirit of Copa, which more than being just a beer competition, is a great event that focuses on culture and all its related experiences. The motto was that beer is a passion and a way of life.

It is not excessively poetic to say that all the talks had a romantic touch, transmitting a real interest of where beer is headed, beyond just its production at the world level. Every talk gave the impression of passionately engaging the audience with beer, a narrative of revealing the history of how each beer style was created, how it all began, and its current situation. Ultimately, respecting the roots such as its origin has sustained the evolution of different beer styles up to today.

Tours and workshops
And because Copa isn’t just what happens behind closed doors, but also the experience that takes place when the participants come together to share, laugh, remember previous years and to celebrate this annual event, 2018’s version decided to reinforce these moments, offering new activities for everyone that came.

These new activities were tours to bars and breweries. Even though every year the event has counted on the support of different players, the collaboration with breweries in this edition brought more life and highlighted the activities made for brewers, with great support from themselves.

Thanks to the commitment from the breweries Granizo, Mauco, Barón, Altamira, Mestra, Szot, Quebrada Pudú, Mossto, Kross, Kudell, Alameda Beer Co, Spoh, Intrinsecal and Coda, which opened their doors for the tours, and the bars Frente Cervecero, Mossto, José Ramón, Uncle Flech, Kunstmann, Kross and Bulnes, all the new activities that were developed in Copa 2018 were able to reach the general public and lovers of beer, and bring them closer to a drink that is part of our national identity. By the way, Granizo, based in Olmué, made a Brut Ipa to conmemorate the seventh edition of Copa, with notes of grapefruit, pear and spices, due to the addition of Mosaic and Simcoe hops.

The organizers of Copa, always preoccupied with travelling, getting to know and discover different related festivals, have taken into account all the activities that are worth replicating in Chile. This was the case of the tours that were realized for the first time at Copa, demonstrating to be a highly successful wager which reaffirmed their efforts every year to make this a world-class event.

Understanding that this is about an international event made in Chile, and that, without a doubt, it is a very important platform to show the work of the national beer industry, the great success of this year was created together by the Chilean brewers and the protagonists of this encounter. Like never before, Copa transformed itself into the beer event of Chile, built by all of its actors.

In the tours there was all kinds of people, with numerous Peruvian and Argentine visitors that came to Chile, in addition to many Chileans. The tours were full and were a complete success.

Another important milestone in Copa 2018 was that the same Chileans that participated in the tours discovered that there is a great variety of local breweries: “To a lot of people, Chile doesn’t appear to be a beer country, even though it is, which is why it’s so important for Copa to take place. Chile is such a beer country that you don’t have to be a dreamer to talk about beer forming part of our national identity because it is part of our identity. It’s an industry with great potential and sustainable growth with nothing to envy about other countries’ beer scenes,” remarked Paola Fernández, the Director of Communications and Production of Copa for the past four years.

The beer styles workshops were open to the general public and anyone that was eager to get to know more about them and get closer to the world of beer. The first one began on Tuesday, October 9th, with Belgian Styles, followed by Wednesday’s German Styles workshop, then Thursday’s English Styles, and finally, Friday’s American Styles workshop.

These days of workshops, which are a classic part of Copa, demonstrated that just like in years before, there is a large audience of people interested in learning more about the world of beer. According to Marcelo Mancilla, the Director of Administration and Finance of Copa, the attendees were more active and engaged this year, asking questions constantly and were interested in the different activities during the whole week. The participants became closer with one another and with the speakers.

People had a space to share, which is precisely the purpose that this year’s activities strived for, bringing together every brewer in the same place to comfortably do business and have conversations. An environment was generated that allowed the brewer to be in their stand, taste different beers, and share knowledge with others in the industry. This was exactly the friendly environment that Copa wanted to achieve.

Santiago Beer Week promotes beer culture and the development of responsible habits of consumption. Annually in Chile, 700 million liters of beer are produced and it is estimated that the consumption per capita increased in the past decade from 25 to 46 liters.

The latest statistics indicate that in 2017, 22.53 % of people 55 and older regularly consumed craft beer; a universal taste in society considering that there are more than 300 craft breweries in Chile which represent 1.7 % of the national market.

An epic closing ceremony

In addition to the competition and the events open to the general public, considering its international reach throughout the industry and its loyal commitment to creating culture and making the region regarded internationally, this year’s Copa also decided to do something different with an Awards Party in the truest sense of the word.

After the awards ceremony, the attendees were able to share and enjoy a party designed for them, with the support of the Chilean beer industry, who were committed during the entire event to support and encourage the growth of passion for beer, which is exactly the spirit and seal of Copa. The union between brewers was meaningful and quite the sight to see this year because people could completely enjoy themselves and the local brands were able to show off their products.
After an intense day’s worth of activities from sunrise to sunset, the results are clear to the organizers: although they’re exhausted after months of hard work, they’re also happy because they have the satisfaction of knowing that all those that came this year won something in Copa; whether it was medals, recognition, or simply their experiences, in Copa, all of us win and every action is worth the effort.

Once again, the best professional speakers of the craft beer industry led the second week of October in Chile with Santiago Beer Week and they dedicated themselves to creating the region’s largest competition, after years of working for beer culture and positioning Latin America as a model in the industry.

After its seventh year with more than 390 breweries participating in Copa Cervezas de América 2018, each one with their own formula to surprise a selective and demanding international panel of judges, the bar remains high and its organizers know it, which is why after a brief pause, they began to think of new challenges for 2019.

Valparaíso Beer Week

“One of the great lessons of this year was that we realized that we no longer only organize a beer competition, conference, and suppliers expo. Today, we organize a social event in which the protagonists are the brewers that participate and come to share their beer passion with their peers from all over Latin America,” concluded Daniel Trivelli. This is why in 2019 Valparaíso Beer Week will take place between August 26th to 31st, in which the decision to work more closely with the community of local brewers will be deepened, encouraging the development of Chile’s beer culture and identity.

For more than 100 years, Valparaíso was the main commercial port of the Pacific Ocean, bringing along with it the brewing influence thanks to the navigators that docked there for the first time after crossing Cape Horn, and by European immigrants that migrated in search of opportunities. Andrew Blest, an Irish doctor, founded the country’s first brewery in Valparaíso in 1825. Little by little, the port city and its nearby valleys welcomed breweries and their materials around the towns of Olmué, Limache, and El Artificio.

Valparaíso Beer Week strives to recover this historic contribution that this city made to the creation of Chile’s beer culture and to show the relevance that this region’s craft beer has today.