The Winners: Sainsbury’s Beer Competition

It feels like I’ve been writing about these Sainsbury’s beers for a long time. To be fair it is, but once I’d started I wasn’t giving up!

The actual competition finished quite a while ago, and it’s probably a good idea to round up what happened.

Barnstorming beer from Bath Ales

In 2008, Sainsbury’s first launched their beer competition. Breweries provided the supermarket giant with their finest new ales, a selection of which would make it through to the final, where the beers would find themselves in stock and on sale in stores nationwide.

The top selling beers would win a nice big order from the Sainsbury’s to be stocked on a permanent basis, a veritable cash cow and holy grail for many brewers.

The first year saw Bath Ales Barnstormer and Doctor Okells IPA (both very good!) take the title.

This year Scottish brewers dominated the challenge, with no less than 7 of the 15 finalists in stores across the country coming from the industrious BrewDog and their contemporaries the brothers William.

Finalists in the 2009 Sainsbury's Beer Competition

But neither of them could take the title, despite BrewDog’s efforts to push sales by offering a case of beer to everyone who filled their trolleys with Dogma, Chaos Theory and Hardcore IPA (yes, I fell for it in order to get free beer).

The actual winners were the fantastic Bath Ales team with Golden Hare and the North Yorkshire brewery Hambleton’s for their Taylor’s Tipple.

But after all this tasting and comparing do I agree with the cold, hard sales stats?

The answer is no. It was quite tough to whittle the last few down to three, I really enjoyed trying all of them, particularly Bays Breaker, Yellow Hammer and the Williams IPA. The Hambleton ale was nice but didn’t bowl me over and Dogma is a beer of two personalities (or I’m a drinker of multiple personalities and moods?!). Wolf Brewery had two good entries but I couldn’t call either favourites.

Bath Ales' Golden Hare

So, my top three (in my humble opinion) that I’d buy again and again would be (drum roll please!!):

3. Bath Ales Golden Hare - A celebration of floral amber notes and light, zesty character. An immediate winner.

2. Chaos Theory - BrewDog’s predictably random IPA is a self-contained galaxy of flavour and tropical aroma. Utterly wonderful.

1. Williams Brothers Birds & Bees – many thought this was a bit of a surprise entry in the Independent’s Top 50 bottled beers, but this beer is a hidden gem for me. Crisp, floral and sooooo refreshing to drink, I’d buy this on every supermarket trip. Of course I’m dazzled by the wonderful label too, but it is a design fitting of the beer in both quality and essence.

Birds & Bees & Beer: this is a playful ale with citrus and honey flavours