After a hiatus last year, the Australian International Beer Awards (AIBA’s) were back again in 2021, with the Black Hops founders heading down to Melbourne on 20 May to represent as part of the bulging Queensland contingent of craft brewers.
The AIBA’s have been going for over 25 years and are the largest annual draft and packaged beer competition in the world, attracting around 2,600 entries from more than 400 breweries in 26 countries. It allows us to benchmark our beers against the best breweries in the world and we’ve managed to walk away with gold medals for our beers at every AIBA awards ceremony we’ve entered since 2016.
And this year we not only continued our streak of gold medals, we also got 5 gold medals, the equal most we’ve ever got at any awards show!
Here are the Black Hops beers that won gold medals:
- Beach House (3rd AIBA gold)
- Send It (our first AIBA gold)
- Pink Mist (gold for our first AWOL entry, 3rd gold for Pink Mist)
- G.O.A.T (2nd AIBA gold)
- Code Red (3rd AIBA gold)
Medals are awarded if beers meet certain scores, so in each category there could be multiple bronzes, silvers and gold.
From our point of view getting any medal at the AIBAs is a great achievement for a brewery. Brewing beer to style is a show of quality and consistency and we love the opportunity to submit our beers to the beer judges each year.
In addition to our gold medal beers we also nabbed a swag of silver and bronze awards. Here’s how our other entries fared.
Silver Medals
- Pale Ale
- Hornet
- East Coast Haze
- Super Hornet
- Mid Range
Bronze Medals
- Eggnog Stout
- Lay Day Lager
A massive shout out to the brew crew, who keep stepping up and delivering consistent and quality output across our three breweries, as the volume of beer we produce continues to increase. It’s truly a testament to their great work that we continue to be recognised at awards such as these.
While gold medals are great, we would be remiss if we didn’t shout out the big winners on the night. Trophies are awarded in each category for the highest gold medal and overall trophies are awarded to breweries who amass the highest totals. Here were some of the major trophy winners:
Champion Large Australian Brewery
4 Pines Brewing Company (NSW)
Champion Medium Australian Brewery
Hop Nation (VIC)
Champion Small Australian Brewery
Cheeky Monkey Brewery (WA)
Best Australian Style Pale Ale
Burleigh Twisted Palm – Burleigh Brewing (QLD)
Best New World-Style Pale Ale
Cryotherapy Hazy IPA – Sunday Road Brewing (NSW)
Best International-Style Pale Ale
King Road IPA – King Road Brewing Co (WA)
Best British or European-Style Ale (excluding IPA & Pale Ale)
Foghorn Hunter Kolsch – Foghorn Brewery (NSW)
Best Traditional IPA
Sprocket – Bentspoke Brewing Co (ACT)
Best Modern IPA
Lefties – Cheeky Monkey Brewery (WA)
Best Amber / Dark Ale
The Buzz – Hop Nation (VIC)
Best Belgian / French Style Ale
Le Petit Biere – Stone & Wood (NSW)
Best Wood- And Barrel-Aged Beer
Sauvage – Deep Creek Brewing Company (NZ)