BeerBorg

How did your favorites do? Here's my rundown:

- My favorite brewery (Yazoo... duh!) won bronze at the GABF in the sour/barrel category for their Cherry Deux Rogues (flanders red, barrel aged on cherries) from the Embrace the Funk series yesterday. My beer (and hot chicken) friend Brandon Jones, of the popular Embrace the Funk site, who is living the homebrewer dream of getting to move beyond homebrewing and brew his wild beers at Yazoo, got to accept the medal with Josh, Neil and Linus yesterday. Very excited for them all. The wild ale program is really taking off, as they just opened a new wild/barrel brewery, complete with its own bottling line. It sounded like a great weekend for them, with Brandon describing some surreal moments outside of the award, one of which included having Dave Logsdon (Logsdon Farmhouse Ales founder) , Tomme Arthur (The Lost Abbey founder), Lauren Salazar (New Belgium wood cellar manager), and Wayne Wambles (Cigar City head brewer) all hanging out behind their table discussing brewing and getting refills of their beers at the funky beer tasting at the fest. That's pretty cool... I believe this weekend will really make the rep of Yazoo's wild beer program shoot through the roof.



- Sun King racked up two more awards, winning both the gold and silver in the Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer category. That's pretty darn impressive to win two medals in the same category.

- MillerCoors racked up, winning Gold, Silver and Bronze in the American Lager and Light Lager category. Kidding... about it being a favorite of mine, but not about them winning the awards. In fact, throwing in AC Golden and Blue Moon, MillerCoors picked up six medals on the day. Go, BMC, I guess...

Oh, here's the winners page so you can see how your favorites did: linky

Other things I noticed:

- On the o-fest thread, I mentioned I thought Abita's o-fest was very mediocre. They won bronze yesterday, which shows what I know. Same for Avery Kaiser. Duck-Rabbit's o-fest, which someone mentioned on that thread, won silver.
- Pabst won a couple medals
- Shiner Bock won as well
- Sam Adams won two medals.
- Love seeing some of my favorite funky brewers (Logsdon, Ommegang, Boulevard, Funkwerks, Wicked Weed)

- oh... and Sweet Baby Jesus! won... which, of course, makes me exclaim SWEET BABY JESUS!!!

I'm a bit shocked to see no local breweries on that list - save a few exceptions for those that I wouldn't really call "local". I see Stone on there once, Russian River for Pliny of course, but nothing from Lagunitas, Speakeasy, Anchor, Drakes, etc.

What I do see is that Ballast Point won for their Pale Ale so I'm going to have to track that one down to try it. At heart, I'm still a pale ale guy.

I can't believe Abita won anything as they are mediocre.

Our local brewery got the gold again.
"John and Al win Gold for Basil Beer best Herb and Spice Beer. Congratulations! !"
These beers don't sound good to me. But they won.

Columbus Brewing Co. did very well.

Gold Medal - Creeper, Imperial India Pale Ale
Bronze Medal - Bodhi, American Style India Pale Ale

Unfortunately, they don't bottle either one of these. And it's not always that easy to find a location that has these on tap.

I can't believe that Miller Lite won a Gold medal.

I am quite surprised by the relatively small showing of Michigan beers. Did find it interesting that Tappistry made the list. Spoke to them when they were first starting out and they were looking at buying some of our hops. Wonder if that made it into their winner?

RickS wrote:I can't believe that Miller Lite won a Gold medal.

As much as I dislike BMC - when it comes to the American Style Light Lager category... why would it not win that? It, when not skunked, is what an American Style Light Lager is supposed to be. If I attempted to brew an American Style Light Lager and enter it into competition, I would expect to be trounced by non-skunked Miller Lite. And even if a Micro or Macro brewery wanted to take a stab at it, it's hard for them to do it too from a cost effectiveness standpoint (tastes about the same, costs more $ in the store, the masses will still pick up the BMC).

Our local brewery Lion Bridge Brewing brought home a Gold for their Workman's Compensation brew in the English Style Mild Ale category. The most impressive thing about this accomplishment is they have been open for only 7 months!

I'll be visiting Devil's Backbone next month, they did respectable with a gold, silver and two bronze. Unfortunately none of the breweries closer to home placed.

My local favorite got a gold in category 30. They were a guest speaker at our Homebrew club meeting in the spring & spoke about the water adjustment challenges they had for this particular beer.
Airways Brewing: Pre-Flight Pilsner