On 2 March a Black Hops contingent once again headed up to the Royal Brisbane Showgrounds for the Royal Qld Food & Wine Show (RQFWS) Beer Awards. These annual awards allow breweries from all over Australia to showcase their beers and gain valuable feedback leading into the Australian International Beer Awards (AIBAs) in May.
This year’s awards were the biggest yet, with a total of 570 beers from 76 breweries entered in the competition. This was an increase of 14% from last year, with interstate entries up by more than 60 per cent compared to last year.
With the competition for trophies and medals larger than ever before, we were stoked to snag a trophy for our recent 8% Double West Coast Rye IPA, Why Can’t IBU, which took out the Champion Hybrid Beer award.
For a while it looked like we’d equaled last year’s effort of taking out two trophies, when we were initially announced as the winners of the Champion Large Brewery award (having won this prestigious title last year). However it turned out that there was a calculation error, so the title was posthumously awarded to Victoria’s Stomping Ground Brewery. They also took out the Grand Champion beer award for their Czech Pilsner, so hearty congratulations to them for a mighty effort (the Trophy is in the mail!)
Our Results
With a record number of entries this year we were very pleased to again be awarded a trophy, as well as taking home three gold medals (up from two gold medals at last year’s awards);
- Champion Hybrid Beer: Why Can’t IBU (packaged)
- Gold Medal: East Coast Haze (packaged)
- Gold Medal: Why Can’t IBU (draught)
- Gold Medal: Code Red (packaged)
We were super stoked to pick up our first Gold Medal for our latest core range beer, East Coast Haze. And Code Red also scored yet another Gold Medal, to go with the Champion IPA trophy it has taken out at these Awards twice previously (as well as three Gold Medals at the AIBA Awards).
Our beers also took out a bunch of silver and bronze medals. We were particularly chuffed to see our AWOL barrel aged beers step up and make an impression with the judges.
- Silver Medal: East Coast Haze (draught)
- Silver Medal: AWOL Pink Mist (draught & packaged)
- Silver Medal: Code Red (draught)
- Silver Medal: Another Lap Around The Sun (draught & packaged) – Juicy/Hazy IPA
- Silver Medal: AWOL – Table Beer (draught & packaged)
- Bronze Medal: Love Handles (draught & packaged) – chocolate/cocoa beer
- Bronze Medal: Ichibaaan (draught & packaged)
- Bronze Medal: Why Can’t IBU (packaged)
- Bronze medal: Hornet (draught & packaged)
- Bronze Medal: AWOL – La Ferme (packaged)
- Bronze Medal: Flamingo (draught & packaged) – American style fruited sour ale
- Bronze Medal: Roseberry (packaged)
Queensland breweries as a whole blitzed on the night, taking out 14 of the available 17 trophies up for grabs. Congratulations to Ballistic Brewing Co for taking out the Best Queensland Beer of Show for their Coup De Grace beer and Moffat Beach Brewing Co for taking out three trophies. Cheers to a prosperous 2022 for all Queensland brewers!