Queenstown’s Altitude Brewing stormed through the Australian International Beer Awards in Melbourne last week.
Altitude were crowned Champion Small International Brewery and took home the trophy for Modern Pale Ale with their flagship beer Sled Dog.
They won four gold medals — Sled Dog, Crush Party Pilsner, Southern Lights NZ Pale Ale and Moments of Bliss IPA. In total, they had 24 medals from 26 entries with 14 silvers and six bronze.
Altitude have been a rising star for some time and even during the recession years they have defied the economic conditions and grew their annual production.
It’s the second time Altitude have taken out a champion small brewery award, having won that trophy at the New Zealand Beer Awards in 2021.
Sled Dog, a 4.5% session hazy, is their biggest-selling beer, especially in the taproom by the lake in Frankton.
Co-founder Eddie Gapper said: “Being crowned champion again, this time International Small Brewery, feels fantastic. The last few years have been a monumental challenge and our business strategy throughout was ‘Get Better’. Better beers, better margins, better process, better hospitality.
“Our production team has been relentless in pursuit of improvement — and to win Best Modern Pale Ale for Sled Dog Session Hazy shows our most popular beer is a crowd favourite for a reason.”
Shining Peak take home a trophy too
Shining Peak had an awesome night as well, winning the Barrel & Wood Aged trophy with — you heard it here first, remember — their Barrel Aged Feijoa Sour, which I raved about a couple of weeks back 🙂
Shining Peak won a total of three gold medals in the Barrel & Wood Aged class with the 2022 and 2023 Vintage Stouts also getting gold.
Garage Project, to me, looked robbed of Champion Large International Brewery.
They entered 12 beers, won 12 medals, five of them gold, and yet the Champion International brewery crown went to Germany’s Weihenstephan despite that renowned brewery winning only two gold medals.
Garage Project’s gold medal beers were Pickle Beer, White Mischief, Tiny with Lime, Carillon and Engeltjes.
There is a clause about contract-brewed beers and maybe that counted against Garage Project as some of their gold medal winners were brewed at bStudio. I guess being runner-up to the world’s oldest brewery is no mean feat!
There were a handful of other gold medals:
Eddyline T.E.D. West Coast IPA (this being the renamed version of the beer that won the Malthouse West Coast IPA Challenge a couple of years back).
Bach Brewing All Day non-alcoholic Hazy IPA (proving Bach remain the masters of the non-alc category).
and …
Heyday Japanese Rice Lager won a design gold medal (who can resist such a beautiful orange cat!).
There were many silver and bronze medals for other New Zealand breweries and you can peruse all the results here.
One observation: there were some outstanding results from South Island breweries: Eddyline, Sprig + Fern, Rhyme x Reason, Thief and even the very small Gadoochi from Southland.
Congratulations to every beer and brewery that won a medal, it’s a tough competition!