The annual Australian Independent Beer Awards (aka The Indies) is Australia’s largest independent beer competition and provides an opportunity for brewers to benchmark their beers while recognising excellence within the brewing industry.

For the third straight year the event was live streamed, in conjunction with pop up style events around the country, with some of the Black Hops Production crew heading along to our closest local event, at Felons Brewing Co in Brisbane.

Our own Eddie Oldfield (third from right) and Production Manager Lara Maya represents Black Hops in the category of top Queensland Brewery, together with Range Brewing and Moffat Beach Brewing.

With the judging panel assessing almost 1500 beers from over 200 breweries, we knew that getting a gong on the night wasn’t going to be easy. So at the conclusion of proceedings we were pleased to walk away with a swag of 13 individual medals – overall Black Hops was one of the top three Queensland breweries at the event.

Our two Gold Medal beers on the night were for core range favourites Pale Ale and Super Hornet. A major highlight was Super Hornet scoring its first Gold Medal, joining the rest of our core range of beers that have already received this accolade.

Both these beers are firm favourites with our customers and staff and we were very proud that they were recognised for excellence within the industry. A big shout-out to our entire production team for their tireless efforts in the pursuit of making the best beer we can.

We entered our beers in both the draught (can) and packaged (keg) categories, which were judged separately. Here’s the breakdown of our medal winning results:

Gold Medal

• Pale Ale (packaged)
• Super Hornet (draft)

Silver Medal

• G.O.A.T. (packaged)
• G.O.A.T. (draft)
• Super Hornet (packaged)
• Code Red (packaged)
• Code Red (draft)
• Send It (packaged)
• Send It (draft)
• Pale Ale (draft)

Bronze Medal

• Lay Day Lager (packaged)
• Lay Day Lager (draft)
• East Coast Haze (packaged)

Respect to fellow Queensland legends Moffat Beach Brewing Co. who staked their claim for ‘Hall Of Fame’ status by once again taking out four championship trophies.

Special congratulations also to White Bay Beer Co for taking out the Champion Independent Beer award for their White Bay Lager – the first time a lager has taken out the prestigious honour at The Indies.

For the full list of results, head here.