World Beer Awards 2008

The full results of the second World Beer Awards, 2008

It’s been a hard fought competition this year, with some interesting and surprising results.

Following three rounds of intensive tasting by an international panel of journalists, retailers and brewers, we have finally wheedled out the ‘world’s best’ from more than 250 entries.

It was no easy task. The overall standard of beers this year was extremely high, and judges had a hard time separating the excellent and the exceptional.

So to reflect this, we have introduced a Highly Commended award for those beers that were only a few points away from winning.

To get the final results, beers were grouped according to style and tasted, blind, by our core panel of eight judges. The winner of each style (eg. imperial stout) then went through to the next round, and was tasted with the other style winners in that particulay class (eg. oyster stout, milk stout etc). This round was held at Beers of the World Live where 16 brewers and industry personnel lent us their expertise for the day.

The winner from this round (eg.best stout) then went through to the final where it was tasted with other category winners (eg. stout against porter), by our core judging panel again, to find the overall champion.

All the beers listed on the following pages have beaten off some extremely tough competition to win, whether just in their style or the entire category, and they all deserve to be drunk, enjoyed and respected.

Congratulations to them all.

Many thanks to our international panel of judges:
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By Sally Toms

Section : World Beer Awards 08

Page number : 13