Brits Name The Angel’s Share Top American Cask Beer

6 August 2008

CAMRA announces winner of the 2008 Champion American Cask-Conditioned Beer Award

“The Angel’s Share” from Lost Abbey Brewery in San Marcos, California was today chosen as the best American cask-conditioned beer at this week’s Great British Beer Festival.

The winner was selected by CAMRA beer experts, brewers and international beer judges from forty six beers, specially imported for the Great British Beer Festival. The Festival provides a unique opportunity to try beers from around the World alongside 450 British real ales. The international ‘Bieres Sans Frontieres’ Bar includes rare lambics, wheat beers, Trappist ales, honey, fruit and spice beers as well as a giant wooden barrel of Imperial Porter from the De Molen brewery in the Netherlands.

The beer is brewed with copious amounts of caramel malt to emphasise the vanilla and oak flavours found in the freshly emptied bourbon casks, where it spends six months maturing.

Andy Benson, Manager of the Bieres Sans Frontieres bar said, “It’s a great result for Lost Abbey and I’m sure the beer will be a fast-seller at the Festival, just don’t drink too much of it, as it is 12.5% ABV. American beers are often a surprise to the British palate, they are so intensely flavoured that most people either love them or hate them, nothing like the insipid lagers we usually associate with America. The craft beer market in the States is booming and most of these beers are extremely difficult to find this side of the water. Some of the beers are not even available in their own areas in a cask conditioned form.”

Second place went to Mayflower Brewings’ Porter from Massachusetts and third to Cambridge Houses’ IPA from Connecticut.

ENDS

The Great British Beer Festival, Earls Court, London
Tuesday 5th August – Saturday 9th August
www.gbbf.org.uk
www.b-s-f.org.uk

Source: Campaign for Real Ale