AVBC Brings Heavy Metal to California
(October 4, 2004 – Boonville, CA) Anderson Valley Brewing Company brought some heavy metal home from Denver, Colorado this weekend. On October 2nd, the brewery received a Bronze Medal, in the British Stout category, for their Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout, at the 2004 Great American Beer Festival ® .
"It’s a real honor to receive a medal at the GABF," said AVBC Head Brewer, David Gatlin . "There are so many good beers being brewed these days, it’s a tough competition. Most of the beers we compete against are brewed in small batches, some specifically for the event. The beers we send to the competition are brewed in hundred barrel batches (3100 gallons) and come right off our bottling line. They’re exactly the same beers that you’ll find on the store shelves," he added.
The Great American Beer Festival® is the nation’s premier beer event, now attracting approximately 400 breweries and displaying over 2000 different beers in 67 separate style categories. Competition is fierce, with the widest array of beers and beer styles, of any beer judging in the nation. With 201 medals awarded this year, fewer than ten percent of the entries received awards. As this year’s festival lacked a specific Oatmeal Stout category, Anderson Valley’s brewers decided to see how the Barney Flats would fare in another category.
" Barney Flats has too much hop character and aroma to be a true-to-style oatmeal stout, but it’s our deliciously rich and complex version of what an oatmeal stout can be," said brewery president Kenneth Allen. Recalling the early years of the brewery, Allen added "Barney Flats was our first ale to receive a GABF medal, the gold in the Oatmeal Stout category, back in 1990 . We’d entered it in prior years, and the judges kept saying it was fantastic, but too hoppy for the style. In 1990, though, they decided that, style or no, Barney Flats was so much better than any other stout being judged, that they had to give it the gold. It’s tough to get that much flavor into a stout, and I think we’re the only ones doing it."
Barney Flats, one of Valley Brewing Company’s regularly awarded ales, also recently won the Silver Medal in the Oatmeal Stout Category at the 2004 World Beer Cup , and the Gold Medal for Oatmeal Stout in the 2003 World Beer Championships.
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