Case Study: Best of Craft Beer Awards achieves streamlined bottle tracking and scalable awards management with OpenWater

A System to Determine the Best Craft Beer

Best of Craft Beer Awards (presented by Original Gravity Events) needed a way to manage hundreds of physical beer submissions across 86 categories and dozens of judges without standard product identifiers. OpenWater provided its awards management software and recommended integrating Airtable for barcode-based inventory tracking, while using Api2Pdf to generate barcodes and packing slips so each handcrafted bottle could be uniquely tracked.

OpenWater implemented a workflow where each submission is assigned an Application ID barcode that syncs between OpenWater and Airtable, allowing staff to scan with smartphones, manage inventory, and assign samples to judging flights. The solution eliminated data-entry errors, simplified workload, supported multi-round judging for dozens of judges and hundreds of entries, and positioned the Best of Craft Beer Awards for international growth with minimal added cost—demonstrating OpenWater’s ability to scale award operations.

Best of Craft Beer Awards