Stewart Brewing Hollyrood wins again…
On Friday there was further good news for Loanhead’s Stewart Brewing, as their 5% pale ale Hollyrood was named Champion bottled beer of Scotland. It will now go on to the national SIBA finals in February to take on the other regional champs from around the UK. MrB and myself were in attendance for the judging, having secured a couple of invitations for the BeerCast to take part. Alva’s Williams Brothers were also the day’s big winners, securing Golds in three of the five categories, and taking overall Silver for Midnight Sun and Bronze for 7 Giraffes.
Having taken part in the judging for last year’s Champion Beer of Scotland I was looking forward to the competition. The beers had been divided into categories, and the judges were allocated two each for the afternoon’s tastings. MrB was put into the ‘Bitters under 5%’ and then ‘Bitters 5% and over’ sections, meaning he got through a lot of golden session beers, whereas I was selected for the ‘Speciality’ and ‘Milds, Stouts, Old Ales and Porters’ categories.
The Speciality tag can mean pretty much anything (as you can see from the colours in the photo above), and it was interesting to judge an oak-aged porter against a Finnish-recipe juniper ale. Of course, the judging is done blind so you can only go on your senses – although it’s human nature to try and guess what it is you’re drinking. Only afterwards when the identities of the beers are released do those guesses prove to be wildly inaccurate. The standout for me were Harviestoun’s Ola Dubh 40 (that oak-aged porter) and Stewart Brewing’s Hefeweizen (which we identified immediately, there not being many bottled Scottish weissbiers).
After a short interlude and the swapping of stories – MrB asking for second helpings of Fyne Ales Avalanche, for example – it was back for the next category. Where speciality beers were varied, the stouts and porters were much harder to differentiate between. Six dark malty offerings later, and our scoresheets were heading back to be collated. In that category there was only one winner for me – Highland’s awesome Orkney Porter got the highest score on my sheet, although there were so many dark beers that it didn’t make it into the final reckoning.
So the overall winners were announced as Williams Brothers Cock o’ the Walk (Bitters over 4.1%), Stewart Brewing Hollyrood (Bitters 5% and over), Colonsay IPA (Gold beers), Williams Brothers 7 Giraffes (Speciality) and Williams Brothers Midnight Sun. These were all re-tasted in the final, with Stewart Brewing’s offering coming out on top – and only five months after it won best pale ale at the 2010 World Beer Awards – congratulations to Steve, Jo and all the team.
In a few weeks the national SIBA finals takes place, and amongst the cask (and for the first time, keg) competitions are the national bottled beer awards. Hollyrood will face stiff competition from the other regions, as Thornbridge’s peerless Kipling is representing the Midlands and Kernel Export Stout 1890 will be there for the South East. We won’t be able to make it to Nottingham for the finals, but we’ll let you know how Scotland’s entrants do against the rest of Britain.
