PREV
We’ve been creating keg beers for a little over a year now, so as newbies we were apprehensive when we put them into the SIBA National Beer Competition. For those of you that don’t know, SIBA (Society for Independent Breweries (plus an erroneous ‘A’), are a national body who represent many of us smaller breweries by lobbying parliament, giving technical advice, helping us sell to PubCos etc, and have a Regional and prestigious National Beer Competition, in which hundreds of breweries enter.
What I like about their competitions, is that the judging is done by people who really should know their stuff – beer sommeliers, brewers, industry experts – and it’s all done blind. You also get a nice glass trophy if you win, alongside the usual certificate.
Last year we won the regional Overall Champion in cask with Redwood, and with Lignum Vitae the previous year, but this was our first keg competition.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, our keg beers did pretty darn well. Weizen won Gold in the Speciality Keg Beer category, Slate won Gold in the Stout/Porter/Mild Keg category, and Pale won Bronze in the Strong Pale Ale Keg category.
And not only that, but when the three keg Supreme Champions were declared, we won two out of the three with Weizen and Slate. Hats off to the Supreme Supreme Champion – Burning Sky, with their Easy Answers IPA, which unfortunately I never got to try. All in all, not bad for our first competition.
Look out for our keg beers, and make sure you give them a try – we’re pretty pleased with them.