Philly-area winners at World Beer Cup
Iron Hill is named best "small" brewpub. Dogfish Head, Troegs, and Dock Street are also cited.
Iron Hill Brewery came away from last weekend's biannual Brewers Association World Beer Cup in San Diego in fine shape, as did Philly's Dock Street, Harrisburg's Troegs, and Milton, Del.'s Dogfish Head.
For the second time, Iron Hill won the overall award for "Champion Brewery and Champion Brewmaster, Small Brewpub." In addition, Bob Barrar, head brewer at the Media location, won two gold medals, while Newark head brewer Justin Sproul won a bronze.
Held bi-annually, the so-called Olympics of Beer Competition brings together brewers from around the world. This year, judges rated 799 participating breweries, and handed out medals in 95 style categories with a total of 284 awards distributed.
Iron Hill's winning beers included Barrar's Russian Imperial Stout in the "British-Style Imperial Stout" category and Old Ale in the "Old Ale or Strong Ale" category, as well as Sproul's Grodzinski in the "Smoked Beer" category.
Barrar now has 23 medals to his credit, including nine from the WBC and 14 from the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). His Russian Imperial Stout has previously won three GABF gold medals, one GABF silver medal, two WBC gold medals and one WBC bronze medal; his Old Ale has previously won two WBC gold medals and one WBC bronze medal. This was Sproul's second time receiving a medal at WBC, in 2010 he brought home a silver medal for his Crazy Ivan Imperial Stout.
Also:
Troegs Troegenator won the bronze, in Traditional German-Style Bock
Dock Street Brewery Prisoner of Hell won the bronze, in Belgian-Style Pale Strong Ale
Dogfish Head's Noble Rot won the silver, in Experimental Beer
Winners list is here (.PDF)