You can't judge a book by its cover, but once a year we judge some beers by their labels. The winners of our 11th annual contest show us that sometimes, it is what's on the outside that counts.

Every year we make room in our Brew Your Own warehouse for the onslaught of packages containing your homebrewed labels. OK, BYO doesn’t have a warehouse, but the pile of boxes in the editorial office is getting bigger every year. In fact, our intern’s desk was buried for over a month as the labels rolled in.

And every year the Label Contest gets a little more difficult to judge. We fly in Editor Chris Colby from his satellite office in Bastrop, Texas, call in our panel of dedicated judges and assemble around “The Big Table” in our Manchester, Vermont headquarters. The judging process is more sophisticated than anything the BJCP could fathom . . . but it WORKS!

When it was all said and done (26 hours and many broken hearts later) we had a Grand Champion. We had a Gold, Silver and Bronze medalist. We had 19 honorable mention winners and 16 Editor’s Choice labelists. Our hats go off to all of you — Cheers!