2010 Australian International Beer Awards - Analysis of medals

I've gone through the results of the 2010 AIBA, and totalled up the number of medals per category. I don't have visibility of the volume of beers submitted per category, and as such can't determine whether a category is strong or weak in an overall sense.

But other inferences can be made from the data by looking at the mix of medals:

Imperials are best, Porter is next

Strongest performing beer style is Imperial Stout.  Winning 21 medals overall, 33% of these were gold. The overall percentage of gold medals for the competition was 10%. (i.e. 10% of medals awarded were gold).

Second strongest style was Porter. Winning 35 medals overall, 23% of these were gold.

Pilsener: must-do-better
The most medals overall was Pilsener, with 47.  However, only 4% were gold.  So it can be inferred that this style is OK, but not reaching its potential.

"Other" is too big a catch-all
The 2nd and 3rd most medals were wone by "Other" categories. This implies two things: there is a lot of good work happening with brewers trying new things, new styles etc. But..... it also implies the categories for this beer show need to be overhauled.  "Other" should not be so prominent in the volume of medals won.

Aussies need some work
Australian-style Lagers and Ales are the underachievers of this show. Although not a widespread style, they only received 1 gold each (JS Sundown Lager and Nail Ale), which accounted for 5% of medals won in this category.

Packaged & Draught categories - unnecessary
One more consideration that comes from the data..... is there really a need to have separate categories for Packaged and Draught beers ? The ratio of medals won is roughly 2:1 (although this will be due to the sheer volume of packaged international beers). It should be noted that the Gold % was roughly the same for both groups (10%).

I wonder if the judges look for "draught" characteristics vs "bottle" characterstics (as they would when judging, say, porter chartacteristics vs pilsener characteristics) ?  I wouldn't think so.  So I think this split in categories should be done away with.

Certainly, they are two different beasts, and should be submitted separately, but then let them be judged against each other.  It wouldn't lessen the number of medals...... but it would remove half the categories.  This might allow the organisers to do something about the "Other" categories and get a little more specific.