Belgium’s Haacht Brewery has taken out the coveted title of World’s Best Beer 2014 with its Tongerlo Blond at the eighth annual World Beer Awards in Britain.
The international judging panel presided over around 700 beers from 30 countries. In the end, it was the Haacht Brewery’s Tongerlo Blond that claimed the top prize despite strong competition from Asia and the Americas.
The Belgian beer, which won in the World’s Best Pale Beer category, triumphed over the World’s Best in the remaining seven categories, which included two winning beers from Sydney’s Redoak Brewery. The multi-award winning Australian brewery won World’s Best Stout/Porter with its Baltic Porter, and World’s Best Flavoured Beer with its Special Reserve.
It’s been a great few months for Redoak, recently being declared Supreme Champion at the International Beer Challenge and winning Champion Bottled Beer for its Château Sour at the Sydney Royal Beer & Cider Show Awards.
The winning beers at the World Beer Awards include:
World’s Best Lager Samuel Adams, Double Bock
World’s Best Wheat Beer Brasil Kirin, Eisenbahn Weizenbock
World’s Best Dark Beer Malheur, 12
World’s Best Speciality Beer Samuel Adams, Roggen Wolf
World’s Best Pale Beer Haacht Brewery, Tongerlo Blond
World’s Best Flavoured Beer Redoak, Special Reserve
World’s Best Stout & Porter Redoak, Baltic Porter
World’s Best Sour Beer Mort Subite, Oude Geuze
The World’s Best Label title went to the Great Heck Brewery’s Black Jesus.
“After three arduous rounds of beer tasting and evaluating the merits of beers from all over the world, I’m very pleased to see the results of our hard labours,” said Adrian Tierney-Jones, chairman of the World Beer Awards.
“The spread of winners shows the quality of beers from all over the world and I’m especially pleased to see Brazilian beers amongst the winners. It’s slightly disappointing not to see any British beers as the final winners, but on the other hand plenty have taken category awards including Thwaites, BrewDog and Harveys.
“Finally, I would like to thank the judges for all their work — they deserve a drink!”
To see a full list of the results and tasting notes of past awards, click here.