10/06/2026
🍯 Understanding Mead Competition Awards 🍯
We often get asked what all the different medals and titles from mead competitions actually mean, so here’s a quick guide.
🏅 Points-Based Medals - Most common
Many competitions score each mead against a judging standard, usually out of 50 points. Rather than competing directly against other entries for medals, the mead is assessed on its own merits.
A rough guide is:
• 45–50 points: Gold🥇
• 40–44 points: Silver🥈
• 35–39 points: Bronze🥉
A typical score sheet is marked out of 50 points (sometimes 100), with judges assessing:
* Aroma
* Appearance
* Flavour
* Mouthfeel
* Overall impression
Depending on the competition, multiple meads may achieve Gold, Silver, or Bronze medals.
🏅 Place Medals
Other competitions rank entries against each other within a category.
• 1st Place🥇
• 2nd Place🥈
• 3rd Place🥉
This means an excellent mead can sometimes miss a medal entirely if it’s in a particularly strong field.
🏆 Best in Class
This award is given to the highest-ranked mead within a specific category, such as Traditional Mead, Melomel (fruit mead), Metheglin (spiced mead), or Experimental Mead. So there can be multiple Best in Class winners at a competition, depending on how many classes there are.
👑 Best in Show - aka; Champion Mead
This is the overall champion of the competition. The Best in Class winners are judged against each other, and one mead is selected as the standout entry of the entire show.
There can be only one Best in Show in each competition.
Sometimes, if the specific competition is using the points-based medals system, there might be no gold medals given at all, but Best in Class’s and a Best in Show trophy🏆 is still awarded.
No matter the award, every medal represents the hard work of the mead maker and the feedback of experienced judges.
Skål! 🍻
