Beaming winners at the European Beer Star 2024 awards ceremony in Nuremberg. Their beers are now among the best in the world. The most successful brewery is Firestone Walker from the USA. The Riegele brewery from Augsburg is the best German brewery in this year's competition.

2,360 beers from 50 countries took part in this year's competition. The tasting took place in September, during which the international jury decided which beers deserved the coveted gold, silver and bronze awards in a two-day blind tasting. The 140 or so master brewers, specialist journalists and beer sommeliers assessed the beers according to the sensory criteria of appearance, smell and taste as well as the typical varietal characteristics of the 75 categories.

The medal table

A look at the medal table shows that the European Beer Star is very international. Awards go to 26 countries around the world. Germany is and remains the country with the most winning beers: 27 times gold, 20 times silver and 24 times bronze. It is closely followed by the USA (13 gold, 10 silver, 13 bronze) and Italy (7 gold, 9 silver, 13 bronze). Austria came in 4th place with (5x gold, 10x silver, 5x bronze), followed by the Netherlands with 5 gold, 4 silver and 3 bronze awards.

The most successful breweries

Firestone Walker (Paso Robles, California) was awarded the title of “Best Brewery” with three gold and one silver medal. With two gold and two silver medals, the Riegele brewery is the most successful brewery in Germany.

The Dutch Bierbrouwerij De Koningshoeven, better known under its brand name La Trappe, also won four awards (1x gold, 2x silver, 1x bronze). Another four awards went to Bayreuth brewery Gebr.
(1x gold, 1x silver, 2x bronze).

The Ottakringer Brewery from Vienna and the pFriem Family Brewers from Hood River received a complete set of medals. Two gold awards each went to the Rittmayer brewery in Hallerndorf, the Störtebeker Braumanufaktur in Stralsund, the Hofmühl private brewery in Eichstätt and the Schützengarten brewery in St. Gallen, Switzerland.

New categories

The categories of the European Beer Star are reviewed every year, some are changed and new ones are always introduced; this year the categories “German-Style Sour Beer” and “Baltic Porter”. The awards for the former go to breweries from China, the Netherlands and Italy. The awards for “Baltic Porter” went to the beer style's home region of Poland and Ukraine.

The winners of the traditional categories

Gold for the best German-style Pilsner went to the Zwettl private brewery from Austria. Stieglbrauerei zu Salzburg took silver in this category, while pFriem Family Brewers in the USA won the bronze medal, leaving the German breweries empty-handed in this category.

Klosterbrauerei Furth left the competing beers behind in the “German-Style Helles” category. The best “German-Style Dunkel” comes from Eittinger Fischerbräu. In the “Hefeweizen Hell” style, the Grolsch brewery from the Netherlands was able to keep the competition from southern Germany at bay by winning the gold medal. However, the other wheat beer categories were firmly in the hands of Bavarian and Baden-Württemberg breweries.

The best light cellar beer came from Aktienbrauerei Kaufbeuren, while the gold medal for the dark version went to Fürst Wallerstein Brauhaus.

Free Style Beer

In the “Free-Style Beer” category, only those who are creative and implement a good and exciting idea in addition to sensory quality can win. Gold was awarded to a specialty beer from La Cervesera Artesana from Spain. Their Imperial Oyster Stout is matured in glass amphorae for 6 months under water off the coast of Barcelona and impressed the European Beer Star jury both in terms of taste and storytelling.

The complete list of winners can be found at European Beer Star.

Photo: © Sepp Wejwar

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