Clean, well-brewed mainstream beers earn top award for DB

In case you missed the week's big beer news, DB is New Zealand's champion brewer for 2010.
 
The country's second-largest brewer prevailed at this year's BrewNZ Awards in Wellington. This year's competition, the ninth, attracted a record 466 entries from more than 40 breweries worldwide and was judged over 3 1/2 days by 22 expert judges.
 
It would be fair to say DB's win – announced at an awards dinner at Wellington's Duxton Hotel last Thursday – raised a few eyebrows. It shouldn't have; DB excels in making clean, well-brewed beers, albeit in a comparatively narrow range of largely mainstream styles. This year it cleaned up in each of those classes.
 
The BrewNZ Champion Brewery award is made to the brewer whose three top-ranked beers achieve the highest points score. Three points are awarded for a gold medal, two for a silver and one for a bronze. In the event of a tie, each brewery's fourth-ranked beer is then taken into consideration. That's exactly what happened last week.
 
For the first time in the event's history, the top three highest-scoring breweries were divided by just two points. DB clinched the supreme award with two gold medals and two silvers. Export 33 took a gold in the low carbohydrate category and Tui Blond won a gold in the New Zealand lager class. Meanwhile. Tui was awarded a silver in the New Zealand draught category (no, it's not an india pale ale!) and Monteith's Black, a German-style dark lager, was awarded a silver in the European lagers category. Well done to DB's brewing team.
 
Snapping at DB's heels was Christchurch's Three Boys Brewery, whose medal haul included golds for two dark ales, Oyster Stout and Pineapple Lump Porter. The latter won a hotly-contested festive beers category which, this year, featured experimental brews flavoured with indigenous ingredients. While most brewers saw this as an opportunity to brew with native flora such as horopito, kawakawa, pikopiko and kumara, Three Boys' Ralph Bungard took a more left-field approach by using Pascall's Pineapple Lumps!
 
Three Boys also won a silver for its Golden Ale to match DB's medal tally after three beers, but subsequently lost the battle for Champion Brewery by a single point when its fourth beer, Three Boys Wheat, only managed a bronze. Nevertheless it was a remarkable achievement for the amiable Bungard and his Woolston brewery.
 
Just one point behind Three Boys was Steam Brewing Company. The Auckland-based brewery, which supplies the Cock & Bull pub chain, struck gold with Fuggles, an English-style bitter, and Monks Habit, its multi-award-winning American-influenced (but New Zealand-hopped) amber ale. The brewery's third-ranking brew, Dirty Blonde, a wheat beer, was awarded a bronze.
 
Other trophy and gold medal winners included Rotorua's Croucher Brewing, for its Pilsner; Blenheim's 8 Wired Brewing, for The Big Smoke – a smoked porter; and Epic Brewing, for its Barrel Aged IPA. Christchurch's Twisted Hop won the cask conditioned category and Bay of Plenty's Aotearoa Brewing took the packaging trophy for its Mata range.
 
Last year's champion brewer, Emerson's, won the Wheat Beers trophy for its Dunkelweiss in a medal haul that included five silvers and four bronzes, and a hotly-contested cider and perry category saw a win for Bulmers Pear Cider.
 
My congratulations to all of this year's winning brewers. New Zealand beer and cider just get better and better.
 
Cheers!
By Geoff Griggs - The Marlborough Express
Source: Stuff.co.nz