Blind Tiger Brewery wins three awards at World Beer Cup 2024

TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) – The Blind Tiger Brewery won three awards at the World Beer Cup 2024.

Blind Tiger Brewery and Restaurant officials said they earned three awards at the World Beer Cup on Wednesday, April 24 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Blind Tiger Brewery and Restaurant said the awards include:

• Bronze Award – Smoky The Beer – Smoke Beer category
• Gold Award – Munich Dunkles – Munich Style Dunkel category
• Bronze Award – Maibock – German Style Bock or Maibock category

Blind Tiger Brewery and Restaurant officials indicated this award continues the streak John Dean, Brewmaster at the Blind Tiger Brewery here in Topeka, began in 2001. Over the years the Blind Tiger Brewery has earned an astounding total of 30 national and international medals and awards during his tenure at the helm of the Blind Tiger brewing team. This is more awards than any other brewery of any size for over 500 miles! Truly an astonishing achievement.

John Dean, Brewmaster and part owner of the Blind Tiger Brewery, describes these great beers as follows:

Smokey the Beer

• 5.8% ABV
• 11 IBUs
• German Style Rauchbier Hey, this beer tastes like smoke! It’s supposed to; it’s a German style Rauchbier. The malt, which is imported from Bamberg Germany, is smoked over a beech wood fire and the smoke flavor comes through in finished product. We use noble hops and German lager yeast to craft this full flavored brew.

Munich Dunkles

• 5.2% ABV
• 15 IBUs
• This dark lager beer is brimming with malt character and flavor. The malt bill calls for more than 50% Munich malt! The color of this beer is like rich mahogany. Noble hops add aroma and help balance the malt sweetness. Low hop bitterness with a clean finish. Don’t be afraid of the dark!

Maibock

• 7.5% ABV
• 16 IBUs
• This quaint looking beer is very strong! Consider yourself warned. Yes, this German style bock is golden and bright, not dark. Mai means May and well, Bock means goat, but that’s another story. May means Spring and after a long winter of drinking dark beers, Germans were ready for a bright golden beer to celebrate spring. And that’s where babies come from.

Blind Tiger Brewery and Restaurant indicated these beers were brewed on their brewing system at 37th Street and Kansas Avenue here in Topeka with all German ingredients (malt, hops, and yeast) and the superb Topeka water. They are all three on tap now at the Blind Tiger Brewery.

Blind Tiger Brewery and Restaurant said often referred to as “The Olympics of Beer,” the World Beer Cup is the most prestigious beer competition in the world. The Brewers Association developed the World Beer Cup Competition in 1996 to celebrate the art and science of brewing. The global competition is now held every year and moves from city to city. It gets harder and harder to win every year because of the enormous quantity of entries and the amazing high quality of the beers entered from all around the world.

Blind Tiger Brewery and Restaurant indicated each year that a highly qualified professional panel of over 250 Certified Beer Judges from over 35 countries, selected for knowledge of beer styles, the brewing process, flavor perception, and industry recognition, gathers. They then honor the best beers in 110 world beer style categories with gold, silver and bronze awards at the World Beer Cup. These awards are recognized around the world as symbols of brewing excellence. The World Beer Cup is the pinnacle of achievement in the brewer’s art for all breweries large and small. Judging takes place in five rounds of blind tasting so that the judges focus on taste, aroma, appearance and adherence to style for each beer, and are not influenced by brand names.

2024 World Beer Cup Statistics:

• 15th Competition
• Beers Entered: 9,300
• Breweries Entering: 2,060
• International Breweries: 25%
• Countries: 50
• Certified Judges: 280
• International Judges: 103
• Judge countries: 37
• Judging Sessions and Days: 7 days, 14 sessions
• Beer Style Categories: 110

Blind Tiger Brewery and Restaurant said John Dean, a native Topekan, has been the Blind Tiger Brewmaster since 1999. The three awards this year add to his total which now stands at 30 National and International awards during his tenure! Jay Ives, majority owner of the Blind Tiger Brewery, said, “John Dean is a treasure, brewing is an art, and we have Rembrandt!” John Dean is by far the most award-winning brewer in the entire Midwest.

“The competition is incredibly stiff with amazingly great beers from more than two thousand breweries from all over the world,” Ives said. “It is a real tribute to John Dean and Alvaro Canizales, Head Brewer, that the Blind Tiger Brewery has been chosen for these prestigious awards. Here we are, a small, local organization competing with the giant beer companies – and winning.

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