Barcelona Beer Challenge, a breath of fresh air for the beer sector

The sixth Barcelona Beer Challenge awards ceremony was held in Badalona with limited capacity, but in person. After a year of videoconferences, hosting a major live event is a green shoot for a beer sector battered by the pandemic.

The sixth edition of the competition aims to award up to sixty beer styles in order to ultimately discover which is the best brewery of the year—that is, the one that wins the most medals. This time, the jury was made up of forty specialists who over three days tasted 1,167 entries from 232 breweries from all corners of the globe. Due to Covid-19, the tasting format was carried out with only three judges per table and no rotation.

To evaluate the beers, the jury applied the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) guidelines in their 2015 update. However, the competition also introduced new categories to give visibility to new realities in the sector, such as the rise of alcohol-free beers and hard seltzer, which, although not beer, is another fermented product made by brewers.

In addition to the medals awarded to each beer, the Barcelona Beer Challenge presented the following prizes:

• Brewery of the Year, awarded to the brewery with the most medals in the competition, went to Basqueland Brewing (Basque Country, Spain) with a total of nine medals. Basqueland was founded in 2015 by Kevin Patricio and Ben Rozzi.
• New Brewery of the Year, for the best newly created brewery (since at least January 1, 2019), awarded to Birrificio Torre Mozza (Italy), founded by Daniele Menin.
• Molina for Brewers Innovation Award, in recognition of innovation in the creative process of brewing, for Cátedra Beer (Murcia) for its Cátedra BioFilter technology, “a pioneering tubular photobioreactor in the brewing industry capable of eliminating CO2 emissions in beer production through microalgae. It is an ecosystem within the brewery that, by imitating nature, helps reduce CO2. The microalgae perform photosynthesis and convert CO2 into oxygen, reducing the environmental impact generated by brewing,” explains the brewery.

Regarding the Steve Huxley Award for a career in the beer industry, it will be presented at another event, InnBrew, a convention aimed exclusively at companies and industry professionals, which will take place from July 22 to 24 at La Farga de l’Hospitalet, Barcelona.