The last time I visited the offices of Thornbridge brewery, I noticed a large cardboard box full of picture frames in one corner, It turns out they were awards, presented to them by festival organisers across the country. Were they reluctant to hang them? Embarrassed, perhaps? Gladly, no - the simple answer is that the walls were already crammed full of certificates.

And the majority of those were for Jaipur IPA, a beer that's been winning awards since it arrived in 2005. With 57 awards (and counting) in four years, it was disappointing for it not have been chosen for judging at the Great British Beer festival this year. When a beer is winning CAMRA festival awards - consistently - it would seem that it deserves to be placed alongside its peers and be judged at national level.

Thornbridge didn't leave empty handed from Earls Court, though. With a silver medal for Kipling and a bronze for their perennially-underrated bitter, Lord Marples, their award count kept climbing. And I'm pleased to see that the plaudits are still stacking up.

The last few weeks have seen success in the World Beer Awards (Halcyon being judged the World's Best Harvest Ale and Bracia being highly commended in the World's Best Spiced beer section) and at the International Bottled Beer Challenge (gold for Kipling and Bracia, silver for Saint Petersburg). That brings to one hundred the number of industry and consumer awards Thornbridge has won since September 2005.

A hundred awards - from competitions held all around the world - is a phenomenal achievement for such a young brewery. I love their beers and their attitude and look forward to them covering their wider walls with awards at the new brewery site in Bakewell. And to celebrate their 200th award in a few years with something sparkling - time to get that Derbyshire lambik developed, guys!

PS - Castleton confectioners Cocoadance won a Great Taste Award this year for a beer flavoured truffle. Which beer did they use? Jaipur, of course... >

You know your Christmas experience is incomplete. Turkey, pudding, presents, New Year party, pools of vomit and bitter recrimination. You've had all that but you haven't had the awards ceremony that really matters. It's the Scoopies!









No obvious order, no cogent process, just me and my beers and the occasional ASBO-inducing memory.



The 'It's Just Gone' Award for Pissing Off Scoopers - Derby CAMRA

For the beer choice in the Darwin Room; if its name isn't up on the washing line it ain't on and you can't have none. Make 'em sweat! Make 'em wait! And mucho kudos for putting the Brewdog beers on for the Thursday night at last year's winter fest. Saw them, drank them, had interesting sick in my glass all along the Morledge.

The 'Aintchasickofit' award for Stupid Drinking In A Decent Ale Pub - every twonk who ordered Landlord instead of a 'house-brewed' beer at the Brunswick or the Royal Standard in Derby.

Like lager, buy lager, no problem. Like cask beer, have up to eleven other beers to choose from, still order Landlord? Please report to Pork Farms immediately - your brain has been reserved for sausagemeat.

The Jobsworth Award For Services To Ruining A Good Day On The Ale - Trent Barton Buses

OK, not Trent per se, just the grumbly bogger who NEVER drops us off by the bus garage on the way into Derby - the garage that's next to the Smithfield pub. "I'm not supposed to stop there," he says, despite there's a bus stop / a fecking BUS GARAGE / no-one on the bus would give two shits if you stopped. May the erotic itch you experience late at night turn out to be chlamydia.

Pork Pie of the Year - Lanes of Leicester

A real shock, this one. Walter Smith's proved to be uneven, Bailey and Sons of Upper Broughton was almost superb, but Lanes takes the Scoopy for that combination of squidgy flat top and sumptuous jelly. Easily the best food at the Leicester beer festival.

Landlord of the Year - Timothy Taylor.

Only joking. It has to be Graham Yates of the Brunswick Inn, Derby. For being grumpy, engaging, caring and curmudgeonly. Usually all in the space of ten minutes. And for staying out of the brewery and letting James get on with it.

The 'OhMyGodILoveBeer!!!' Moment of the Year

Nottingham CAMRA 1st Robin Hood beer festival. Sat by the castle wall, looking out over the southern shire, drinking Potbelly Crazy Daze whilst the Castle's Union flag snapped in the sharp breeze.

Ratebeer Moment of the Year - At The Bear, Oxford Crawl

The smallest pub ever, already rammed full of diners debating whether to have peas with their sausage and mash, when a dozen or so Ratebeerians turn up. A line to the bar and out of the door was formed, pints of Hooky passed over heads already scraping against the ceiling, out into the street where we then sat by the bins as tourists took photos.

Surprisingly Good Pub of the Year - The Star, Godalming

I washed up into Guildford on a training course, a town stuffed with tepid continental lager and hilarious WAG-wannabe bars. Taking the train down to the next stop one night was a calculated gamble but, boy, did it pay off. The Star has it all; candlelight and bustle and a local's bar they didn't mind me invading. Proper perry and decent ales and the best pint of Harvey's Best that I've ever had. And those in the know drank that 'til the barrel ran dry.

Pointless Bar Snack Of The Year - Pickled Onions.

Barman! I'll have a pint of your finest balanced IPA.... and a vinegar-infused bull's gonad to complement it. There's a time and a place for pickled onions - the twelfth of never, over the nearest event horizon.

Best CAMRA festival of the year - Nottingham.

I still can't believe there was a better fest than Worcester with its paella and Blue Bear Uproar and Pictish Corn Dolly and Oz & James and Olivers Blakeney Red. But there was. The first Robin Hood Festival was - wow. I know some people had issues with the hot food, the queues, the beer availability on Saturday. But I had hot food in town, got there early and didn't go on Saturday. The full write-up is here but let's just say this: an A-Z of fantastic cask beers, fresh seafood, stunning vistas, good friends and the unalloyed joy of all those things segueing together.

Best non-CAMRA festival of the year - Barrow Hill Rail Ale.

For you poor unfortunates who haven't heard - this is a beer festival in an engine shed. You get to buy beer and go take a train ride. You get to be almost run over by reversing locos. How could it not be fun? You get to watch tickers cum in their corduroys at the sight of steaming engines and rare beers. OK, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement. This is - Abbeydale Black Mass. Bottle Brook Imperial Russian Stout. Falstaff Wilko. White Shield No.1 and P2 Imperial Stout. Those last two in the same glass. Cheers, Mes :-) For a fest chock full of high ABV beers and trip hazards, there was none better.

Best cider or perry as judged by Mrs Reluctant - Severn Sider Whisky Cask Perry Or Something Like That.

Let's face it, you can't even take what the cask end says as gospel. But my little nest of vipers loved the subtle whiskyness and the easy going perry nature - Blakeney Red, perhaps? Whatever, it made Burton Spring fest a whole lotta whiskyperry fun. (FWIW I thought Whin Hill's Browns, their blushing rose cider, was gobsmackingly wonderful. But let's not kick off a domestic)

Best bottled beer - Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast

So good that I've dared not write about it yet. Oats and coffee and chocolate doesn't even come close to describing how effortlessly superb this beer is. A proper write-up will feature in the next few weeks - when I first tried it, I was as excited as a schoolboy who'd just been touched in the gentlemen's area for the first time. Don't believe it could be this pant-expandingly good? Then don't visit beermerchants.com to see if they have any left.

Best cask beer - Thornbridge Katipo.

I thought picking a best bottled beer was tough. There's been some WORLD CLASS cask down my gullet in 2008 - I say WORLD CLASS because sometimes we forget in Merrie England that we brew some of the best, freshest, flavoursome beers that can be had. Hobson's Mild, Bottle Bridge Double Chocolate Porter, McGivern Mild, Potbelly Crazy Daze, Pictish, Headless, Marble, Hopshackle....

But there was only one beer that made me thoroughly Reluctant and insisted that I drank it at every given opportunity. Katipo was one of those rare beers where I felt glad to be in a pub just because it was on; to buy it for total strangers, to feel my heart flutter at the sight of a pumpclip, to be evangelical with glass in hand, to sit with eyes closed and let raspberries dance on my tongue.

And the pronunciation. Car-Tea-Paw. I want a half of Car-Tea-Paw. No, Car-Tea-Paw. Well, actually, NO, its NOT called Catty-po, Cart-Heep-Pow or Katy-Poo. Honest, the brewer told me it's called.... ah, sod it. Give me half of number 344. Yes, the Catty Paws one...

To Kelly 'Tigger' Ryan - brew more. Just Brew More. Beer this good has earned the right to be brewed and drank until it bleeds out of the eyeballs of acolytes.



So, there you go. Winners are entitled to hand-inked certificates. Let me know if you want one, all you have to do is gurn for the camera and buy me beer.

And, for everyone who didn't have a pint of the unusual last year - I salute you.



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In this new weekly column, Toper Talk delves into the shenanigans surrounding 'best beer' awards. Castle Rock, as seen here, were rightly proud to have Screech Owl crowned as the SIBA Midlands Supreme Champion beer. But should one-offs like this be allowed to win regional championships? What about American festivals where brewers pay to enter a competition? And does the plethora of awards end up devaluing the truly great beers that deserve praise and recognition. Read on, dear toper....

I was at Nottingham beer festival last week and was surprised to see that Screech Owl had won the Midlands round of the SIBA championship. Surprised as I didn't think it was that great - good, but not award-winning. Other drinkers were surprised, though, that a monthly special had been allowed into the competition. As it happens, Castle Rock have announced plans to re-brew the beer following its success. But what if it won in the national awards and no-one was able to buy it? Would it be fair to generate demand for a beer no longer readily available? Or would the award-winning status spur the brewer back into production, given the clear commercial potential that the award would confer?

Some fellow brewers were dischuffed, too. One grumbled to me that he could have 'ramped up' a recipe and produce a one-off to attract the judges' palates. But this sounds like a case of sour hops - many brewers entered seasonal beers alongside their regular fayre. And if you exclude a beer only brewed for a month, what about those only brewed for 4-6 weeks? Or for the summer? Or those only brewed with fresh seasonal ingredients?

Perhaps it's a case of Castle Rock playing a canny game - again. I recall a certain one-off beer of theirs called 'Trammy Dodger' that won the same award back in 2004 - with its success leading to it becoming a regular brew, Harvest Pale. What better way to test the market that entering a new beer into competition and gauging the reaction, both critical and commercial?

Fair play to Castle Rock and Screech Owl. Not my favourite in the Strong Bitter section (Potbelly's Crazy Daze would have taken my vote) but I see nothing wrong with a monthly special winning in a blind tasting. At least the eight categories had some clarity. Most dark beers seemed to be lumped together and bitters were split into four groups according to strength. CAMRA add a few more categories in to split up the black stuff and give golden ales a home of their own. But some competitions seem to keen on awarding medals to almost every man with a mash tub and a half-arsed style.

The recent Great American Beer Festival had a competition split into 75 beer categories. I'll have to type that again, as I still don't believe what I've just written. Seventy-five. Six categories of stout, not including those judged in the coffee, strong or barrel-aged sections. CAMRA manage with, er, one category. And that's shared with porter. Which is practically the same style anyway...

And it gets worse. It's pay to play at GABF. Some smaller brewers don't stump up the green for the 'privilege' of taking part, as the expense of 'competing' wouldn't make business sense, even if they won a medal. They probably don't have the dollars to enter the World Beer Cup either. Billed as a competition to "celebrate the art and science of brewing by recognizing outstanding achievement", they certainly recognise the $160 entry fee per beer that they charge, plus the cost of air freighting up to twelve bottles. But with an eye-watering 91 categories awarding gold, silver and bronze, there's plenty of medals available.

At least it's only the beer that's being judged. The International Beer Challenge, for 'packaged' beers, awards 40% of its marks on the packaging. The Best of British Beer award honours only those beers sold in Cask Marque pubs. And don't get me started on the Beautiful Beer awards which seem more concerned with flogging a plaque to licencees than awarding the beers.

Too many awards, driven by commercial concerns rather than beer quality, devalue the hard work of the best brewers. If price is a barrier to entry, competitions lay themselves open to criticism that fatter bankrolls could lead to more gongs. All this makes the huffing about 'allowing' beers in the UK to be judged seem rather quaint.

I've never paid a jot towards the likes of the World Beer Cup. In truth, I'm not even bothered by who wins what at CAMRA level. It certainly doesn't sway my opinion at the bar when I see 'Champion Beer' tags wrapped around a pump clip (too many of those fluff on about gongs long since won). Awards? I'd scrap the lot of them and let the drinking public make up their own minds.

Yes, I am a beer judge. At every festival and every bar I visit - every consumer is. I'm paying to play and that's fine by me. It could be a special mix, an established brew or a rocking-horse-shit-rare bottle. I drink my beer and make my choice. And the winners are shoved only down my throat and no-one elses.
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