Beers of the World magazine recently held its award ceremony for its annual World Beer Awards at the Hurlingham Club in West London.  Lovibonds Brewery based in Henley-on-Thames was awarded Worlds Best Honey Beer for its 7.3% Lovibonds Gold Reserve.

An international panel of judges tasted their way through hundreds of entries from the United Kingdom, Europe, United States, Australia, Japan and beyond to find the winners of each style.  Lovibonds beers were very well received, with Lovibonds Gold Reserve beating two world class breweries, Samuel Adams and Fullers to take the award.  Lovibonds Henley Dark - a 4.8% Smoked Porter was also highly commended (equivalent of Silver medal) in the Smoked Beer category.  These were the only two beers that Lovibonds entered in this year’s awards.

Jeff Rosenmeier and Jason Stevenson from Lovibonds were on hand at the awards ceremony, receiving the award from British beer writer Roger Protz and Sally Toms, editor of Beers of the World magazine.  Upon hearing the news, Jeff, the Founder and Head Brewer at Lovibonds said, ‘It is great to get recognized for our efforts and innovation with these awards.  We could only afford to enter two beers into this year’s competition and we put forward what we thought was our best and we were awarded accordingly.’

 

When asked why he thought these beers were successful, Jeff said, ‘It’s a matter of offering something different, for instance our Gold Reserve is a bit on the extreme side, where we get over 20% of the fermentable sugar from honey.  This is a creation that the judges were not likely to have tasted before, and I think standing out is the most important thing to being successful in these type of competitions.’

 

Distribution of the 7.3% Lovibonds Gold Reserve is limited to the Lovibonds Brewery Shop in Henley, on the Lovibonds web-site, Beermerchants.com and a group of Lovibonds local independent customers.  Jeff stated, ‘We are hoping that these awards help us get the word out and allow us to expand production of these beers.’

 

Innovation doesn’t come cheap however, with 750ml bottles of the Lovibonds Gold Reserve starting at £9.00 a bottle.  Jeff explains, ‘This is a very expensive beer to make, from the honey we used, to the high class packaging to the duty and the time it tied up tank space.  We price all of our beers where they need to be in order to stand a chance as a business.  This is the sort of beer you share with a group a friends prior to a meal or as part of a desert, not something you have a session with.’

 

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