Colorado Brewers Take Home 27 World Beer Cup Medals

Last week brewers from around the world gathered together for a week of seminars and talks in San Diego. The event culminates in the biennial award ceremony for the World Beer Cup, the most prestigious awards in the beer industry. This year, the Brewer's Association reported there were 799 breweries participating, from 57 different countries. There were 95 beer styles to be judged and 3,921 beers entered into those categories. Breweries in the US, make up the largest percentage of entered beers with about 67% of all the entries. That doesn't mean that you're likely to win an award though. US breweries received a total of 208 awards, so the rate of winning an award as a US brewer would be about 7.8%. Your chance goes down of course if your beer is no good. :)

Colorado brewers won a total of 27 awards, so approximately 13% of all the awards won by US brewers. Not bad! I want to give a shout out to some of the breweries and I've also got a complete list of Colorado brewery awards below.

Those Cans That Change Color Are Pretty Cool

Technically this post isn't exactly 'craft beer' related but, whatever, I enjoy myself a Coors Light here and there (uh oh! the cat's out of the bag). I just read that the Colorado Springs Regional Economic Development Corporation handed the founder of Chromatic Technologies Inc. an award for 'Entrepreneur of the Year.' CTI is the manufacturing company that invented the Thermochromic inks used on Coors Light beer cans that turn blue when your beer is at the proper chilled temperature. Maybe some people think it's a gimmick, you can always use your hand to check the temperature, but no one wants to drink a warm Coors Light...Hey, in all honesty and sincerity I think this is a pretty sweet award and I congratulate the group. Maybe someday soon we'll see if we can get a visit and see how the whole thing works.

Here's a little bit more information from the Southside Business News:

CTI has since expanded to provide thermochromic (temperature sensitive) inks that can indicate hot temperatures, as well as photochromic inks which are sensitive to light. In addition to Coors products, the company’s growing customer list now includes additional marketplace giants as Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, Duracell, Monster Energy and Pizza Hut....

The 2011 award represents the third time the Colorado Springs Regional Economic Development Corporation has recognized Mr. Small: in 2010, CTI was named the ”Manufacturing Company of the Year,” and in 2009, Mr. Small was cited as “Inventor of the Year” by the organization.  

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NABA 2011 Awards for Colorado Breweries

Colorado brewers picked up a few awards at the North American Brewers Association (NABA) judging last week. I'll note that we didn't win a whole lot of golds though unfortunately, the majority of medals are bronze placements. I also noticed that the majority of the winners were from the western US, and only a brewery or two from Oklahoma also won an award, nothing east of there as far as I can tell. So the festival seems to be pretty localized and I'm not entirely certain how many Colorado breweries entered compared to how many we see on the list below.