How does one get inducted into the ACBHOF?

In creating the Hall of Fame, long and detailed discussions took place among the Board of Directors about how we would go about electing people into The Hall.  We knew, above all else, we had to get this right.  For the sake of integrity and respectability we had to have a proper and reliable voting system in place. 

I spent a couple weeks perusing the websites of other Halls of Fame, such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland, Ohio) and the Baseball Hall of Fame (Cooperstown, New York), looking for ideas.  I mean, if their voting systems were good enough for HOFs of their stature, they would surely work equally well for ours.

John Freyer, our Vice President, is a big baseball guy -and has even written books on the topic.  He has a good handle on how the Baseball Hall of Fame goes about its business of inducting players each year, and he strongly advocated for mirroring their system. 

It’s not the easiest to understand voting system in the world, but it works, and that’s what counts.  Here is the simplest breakdown of how folks will be voted into the American Craft Beer Hall of Fame:

In order for someone to be elected into the ACBHOF, they must first be nominated to the ballot.  Every calendar year, nominations are solicited from the fifty or so people on our Advisory Board, all professionals from across the spectrum of craft beer industry people, and none of whom are brewers or have brewery affiliations. 

Advisory Board members are tasked with nominating three people each.  That may seem like a rather small number of nominees per person, but when you consider there are 50 people submitting their three favored nominees, the total number of nominees could be ponderously huge -potentially speaking.

But there is very likely to be a lot of crossover nominations; many of the Advisors nominating mostly the same people.  The top ten nominations –based on percentages—are the ones who make the final ballot.

***For the inaugural year, 2024, Advisors will nominate six people each, and the top twenty nominees will make the final ballot.

Once the ballot has been finalized, it is sent out to all members of the Advisory Board, as well as to the ACBHOF Board of Electors, which consists of close to 100 people aligned with the craft beer industry. 

All Advisors and Electors vote on the ten people on the final ballot; they are limited to five votes each (the votes of all Advisors and Electors carry equal weight).

***For the inaugural year, 2024, there are twenty names on the ballot and Advisors and Electors will get ten votes each.

In order for any nominee to gain entrance to the Hall of Fame, they must receive a minimum of 75% of the total vote.

NOTE: Any nominees that do not make the ballot or The Hall in any given year may be eligible again the following year, with no limit on how many years they may be nominated. 

For anyone concerned about voting integrity, all voting procedures are executed via private email link and are tabulated by a professional survey and statistics company; the results are guaranteed accurate and confidential.