Best of 2015
Way back in October 2015, Martin from Stovt asked the Danish beer blogging community if we would be interested in doing a series of coordinated blogs with “awards” for the best of 2015. This idea turned out to be very popular, and most of us participated.
Danish Brewery of the Year (click to read the blog)
I picked the Danish brewpub Ølsnedkeren. I still haven’t been there, but they have started distributing wider, and I had a lot of beers from them in 2015, and was basically impressed by all of them. The big winner among the other bloggers was Amager Bryghus, winning on six of the eleven other participating blogs – no other brewery got more than one “vote”. I could easily have picked Amager myself, but I thought that while Ølsnedkeren was a huge positive surprise, Amager had “just” held up their standard as (by far) the best brewery in Denmark.
I picked the Swedish newcomers Brewski for this one. Most of the bloggers went with a new Danish brewery, which for me would have been Dry & Bitter or Howling Monkey. Out of eleven other blogs five went with Alefarm (I have tasted one beer, but I can’t say that I know the brewery yet), three with Dry & Bitter and three with other breweries.
International Brewery of the Year
I picked Hill Farmstead Brewery. Shaun Hill loves the same beers as I do, pale, light, crisp, refreshing and hoppy pale ales and saisons, and he’s the best in the world at brewing them. And one of the best beer tasting days in 2015 was a Saturday afternoon with Hill Farmstead as the highlights. Eight other blogs participated on this day, and three went with Swedish Omnipollo, while the last five picked five different breweries.
I picked Amager Batch 1000. It would have been the same choice if I was picking the best new beer in the world. This very dry and deliciously bitter IPA with a mix of old and new hop varieties is just my kind of beer. Out of nine other blogs, six agreed with my pick, and of the last three there was even one picking another Amager beer, The Dank Dane.
Despite all the exciting events I have been to in 2015, I picked the tiny little event of tasting two varieties of Hair of the Dog Adam From the Wood, on a Friday afternoon Ratebeer tasting in my apartment. Obviously, there isn’t one particular experience that all the bloggers can agree about. Some write about a particular beer, like myself, some about travelling, beer festivals, discovering a new beer style or getting a new job involving beer. And funny enough, both Stovt and Rock on Beer pick the commercial of their own beer Horrible People Circle Jerk at Christian Firtal Pale Ale Festival, while two others write about a beer blogger get together right here in Odense, invited by… Stovt and Rock On Beer – unfortunately I wasn’t able to participate that day.
It was good fun to pick these five winners, and I hope we’ll also do it again in 2016. It was also a good reason to read all the other blogs regularly for a while. The participating blogs were:
No BS Brewing (in English)
Rock on Beer (in English)
Durst (in Danish)
Humle & Mad (in Danish)
Humulus Lupulus (in Danish)
Højt Skummende (in Danish)
Kajs Ølblog (in Danish)
Ousen om øl (in Danish)
Stovt (in Danish)
Triplealehead (in Danish)
Ulkløbben (in Danish)
Ølnovicerne (in Danish)
