2 Norfolk breweries take home gold medals
NORFOLK — A stout and a pilsner brewed in Norfolk were voted two of the best beers in the country this weekend at what’s widely considered the Academy Awards of the craft beer world.
O’Connor Brewing Company’s ODIS Stout and Smartmouth Brewing Company’s Safety Dance pilsner won gold medals from the Great American Beer Festival. The awards are from the Brewers Association, a trade organization representing craft breweries around the country. A gold medal can help launch a brewing career — or at the very least, justify it.
Chesapeake’s Big Ugly Brewing landed a bronze medal for Steady as She Gose, a gose beer, and Williamsburg’s Precarious Beer Project took home silver in the Bohemian-style pilsner category for Fortune & Glory. Virginia breweries won 16 medals in all. It’s Virginia’s strongest showing in the contest. Virginia brewers took home 13 medals last year.
It’s the second year in a row Precarious won, though last year, it was in the Pro-Am competition for a beer first made by a homebrewer. Big Ugly won a bronze medal in 2018 for its Ghost Rider Porter.
The festival usually takes place in Denver, but this year, the awards were announced in an online ceremony Friday night. About 1,720 breweries around the country entered more than 8,800 beers and judges awarded 272 medals to 240 breweries.
ODIS, one of the first beers
O’Connor made in 2010, beat out 71 other beers to win gold in the stout category.
“Accolades of a festival like this is more appreciation of what we do as a craft than anything,” said Kevin O’Connor, the brewery’s founder.
ODIS has won other awards, including at the World Beer Cup.
Smartmouth’s Safety Dance won in the Kellerbier or Zwickelbier category, which had 71 entries.
A zwickel is a valve on a tank
and a zwickelbier is basically an unfiltered version of a lager. Safety Dance isn’t filtered, Smartmouth president Porter Hardy said.
They created the beer after the staff realized that everyone was probably over-served at the brewery’s first birthday party. They didn’t have a beer under 6% alcohol by volume. After the party, Smartmouth decided to brew a lower-alcohol beer. It’s 4.8% alcohol by volume.
The recipe’s changed over the
years after Hardy and head brewer Jimmy Loughran did a blind tasting and weren’t happy with it. Now it’s up to par, Hardy said.
“I’m proud of that beer because you can’t hide any flaws in that kind of beer,” Hardy said. “I tip my hat to the brewing team for the technical nature of that beer.”
It also won best of show in the 2017 Virginia Craft Brewers festival.
“With everyone doing crazy stuff, to win for a beer that tastes like beer is fun,” Hardy said.
Big Ugly won bronze in the contemporary gose category for its Steady As She Gose, a passionfruit, orange and guava gose. It took third among 81 entries.
Jim Lantry, one of the owners of Big Ugly, watched the ceremony as it streamed.
He said it wasn’t as fun as being in Denver, but was still pretty exciting. And he was thrilled to win for the second time in three years.
“It kind of validates that we are making good, solid beer,” he said.