East Bendigo Brewing Company has taken a swag of medals home from the Australian International Beer Awards.
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Hosted by the Royal Melbourne Show, the EBBC won 11 medals - three silver and eight bronze - in a variety of categories, competing against more than 350 other breweries.
More than 2600 entries were received in this year's Australian International Beer Awards, which is the largest annual beer competition in the world.
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Owner Doug Brooke said he was stoked to win 11 medals from the brewery's 14 entries but that the haul could have been larger.
"Eleven out of 14 is a sensational result," he said. "Any medal is a great result at this level and the margins between one medal and another are wafer thin.
"We actually made a mistake entering our XPA in the wrong category and it didn't get a medal for that reason, even though the judges comments were very complimentary about the beer itself.
"We would have done even better if we'd managed to get that right. As it was all our other beers including our Pale Ale, IPA, Session IPA, Bendigo Pale and Bendigo Draught all received medals".
Bronze and silver medals highlight very good and excellent quality with a gold medal signifying outstanding quality.
Brews are judged on appearance, aroma, flavour and body, technical quality and style.
Mr Brooke said it was important to enter competitions like the AIBA to see where you sit in the industry and what the benchmark is.
He said any medal was a sign breweries are doing the right things with their products.
"We're just a tiny brewery and we haven't got nearly the same level of technical manufacturing sophistication as the big guys," Mr Brooke said. "But we still manage to put out beers good enough to impress judges."
EBBC launched at the end of 2020 and has grown in the past 12 months.
"It's put enormous strain on our systems, people and equipment keeping up," Mr Brooke said. "These medals are a fantastic boost for me and the team.
"It means all the hard work we put in day-to-day, to not only keep up production but maintain our quality, has been worth it."
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