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.

This year’s presentation ceremony was held on 23 August (as part of BrewCon 2023) at The Glasshouse, Surfers Paradise, with some of the Black Hops Production crew heading along. 

With the judging panel assessing over 1300 beers from a multitude of 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 individual medals.

Our two Gold Medal beers on the night were for core range favourites Pale Ale and Hornet.

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 gold and silver medal winning results:

Gold Medal

• Pale Ale (packaged)
• Hornet (packaged)

Silver Medal

• G.O.A.T. (packaged)
• G.O.A.T. (draft)
• Eggnog Stout (draft)
• East Coast Haze (packaged)
• Stoke Dealer (packaged)
• Hornet (draft)
• Pale Ale (draft)

Special congratulations to Ballarat’s Dollar Bill Brewing for taking out this year’s Champion Independent Beer award for Gold Teeth, a blended wild ale with peaches.

And respect to fellow Queensland legends Moffat Beach Brewing Co. who staked their claim for ‘Hall Of Fame’ status by once again being crowned Champion Queensland Brewery.

For the full list of results, head here.