09 Mar Indiana Keeps Punching Above Its Weight With Seven Medals in Best Of Craft Beer Awards
by Mark E. Lasbury for Indiana On Tap
One hundred and sixty-five medals were awarded at the Best Of Craft Beer Awards this past week, which means that across all the United States and provinces of Canada, any one location would average about 2.8 medals. Yet Indiana brought seven medals home – 7!
What’s more, those seven medals were shared across seven different brewhouses, showing that brewing talent in the state isn’t clustered in just a few breweries. True, Sun King Brewing did win three medals, but they were each from a different brewhouse with a different TTB number, so technically they are from different breweries.
image credit: Moontown Brewing
Almost all our surrounding states won at least one medal, but if you add up the medals from Michigan (1), Illinois (3), Kentucky (0), and Ohio (2), Indiana still comes out on top of all of them combined. Yes, I know that different states have affinities for different competitions, and competitions in particular states draw more entries from that general location, but still, it’s no fun if you can’t make it a competition with your neighbors.
Moontown Brewing followed up their GABF triumph of 2021 with a gold medal for Moonlite. This is an oft medaled beer, and took top honors this time in the Golden/Blonde Ale category against 55 other entrants.
Grand Junction Brewing also continued its winning ways from 2021 with a gold medal. They won the Strong Belgian Ale group against 64 other beers with their Westfielder 8 entry. Once again Indiana proves to be “Belgium West” in competition.
A third gold medal was taken by Sun King Brewing Small Batch Brewery in Fishers. Jake’s small batch version of the Wee Muckle beat out 33 other versions in the Strong Ale/Old Ale/Wee Heavy category.
One of my favorite beers won silver in the Rare Beer/Historical Beer group, which may just indicate that I’m old. Four Day Ray Brewing‘s Afterburner was tops over 14 other entrants with their oak smoked Grodziskie.
image credit: Sun King Kokomo
Amanda and JD at Sun King Brewing Kokomo took home the bronze in the Flavored Beer group against a whopping 85 other beers. The Arctic Nomad is a white stout with coffee, cocoa nibs, dark chocolate, vanilla, and lactose.
Likewise Sun King Brewing – the mothership won bronze at the competition. Pachanga, their International/light lager has one more medals than you can count, and at the Best of Craft Beer Awards it took third in their Light Lager category with 41 beers in that group.
Finally, Metazoa Brewing, perhaps the most medaled brewery in Indiana in the last 2-3 years, won a bronze for Meadowlark. This GABF 2019 gold and 2019 bronze medaling beer ranked high against 29 other classic saisons/farmhouse ales.
Congratulations to all the breweries that were awarded medals. The wish for feedback from objective judges is a great thing – it shows that a brewery is actively working all the time to improve their beer. Putting your beer out there for criticism takes guts, so reward that bravery by searching out these breweries and beers. But the caveat I’ve given before still holds true, beers that don’t medal or aren’t entered aren’t less because of it – plenty of fantastic beers haven’t won medals.
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