Hop Idol 2024 judging took place on Sat 29th June at The Gladstone, Carrington, Nottingham.
What a fabulous afternoon we had! The Gladstone in Carrington was a perfect venue. Lots of fridge space, a beautiful function room and sunny beer garden, where we enjoyed the snacks and pizzas supplied for us by Murphy and Sons.
Huge thanks to all the brewers who entered the competition. Once again the quality of entries was very high – of the 82 beers received, 45 achieved a rating of Very Good or above in Round 1 and went through to Round 2 for the second assessment. Once both scores are tallied, we then ranked the beers to find the winners. And contrary to past experience, the top beer was not a Belgian style!!
We’re delighted to announce the winners as follows….
Nottinghamshire – Lenton Lane Brewing Prize goes to Sam Luczynski with Then Maybe You Shouldn’t Be Living Here, a 6% hazy pale ale dry hopped with Simcoe and Eclipse.
National – Grainfather G30 prize goes to Ian Scott with Strange, a 5% German Altbier style beer.
Eight runner up prizes of Charles Faram & Crisp goodie bags go to:
Alex Coulcher with Nectoran Knights a 6.7% IPA and HeadStock, a 4.6% Grisette
Tom Southam with Hoppily Ever After, a 5.7% hazy IPA and Breakfast at Tommy’s a 7.5% Stout
Chris Morley with Wendigo, a 5.8% American Brown ale
Tom Burwood-Ansell with Good Gravy, a 5.4% American Amber ale
Sean Harrington-Thorley with Scale the Heights, a 6.4% Mountain IPA
Sean O’Toole with Wonder What They Will Make Of This? an 8.5% Imperial Stout
Steve Cook with Sesamiso Street, a 6% Milk & Miso Stout
Rick Woolliss with I Hope This Isn’t a Hand Grenade, a 7% Raspberry sour
Our aim is to send individual feedback to all of the brewers by the end of July 2024.
Thank you!
We have to say a huge thank you to all the people that helped make Hop Idol 2024 such an amazing competition and fabulous judging event.
Jack Winter at Lenton Lane Brewery for offering the brewing prize this year – we can’t wait to sample Sam’s hazy pale at the Robin Hood Beer and Cider Festival in October.
Grainfather and Bevie for offering the Grainfather G30 prize.
Richard Davies & Charlie Gorham at Charles Faram and Crisp Maltings for offering the goodie bags for the eight runners up.
Steph Brindley and Rachael Alexandra from Murphy and Sons for sponsoring the catering and supporting the judging event – those pizzas were just what we needed at the end of the afternoon!
Seth from Art of Beer for the excellent artwork and visuals as usual.
Luke, Karl and Katie for being excellent stewards, keeping all the judges supplied with their beers and clean tasting glasses and collating all the judging sheets.
And finally a massive thanks and well done to all the hard-working expert judges who spent the afternoon diligently assessing all the beers. They are a pretty impressive bunch!
Lucy Simons and Alex Downham from Let’s Beer
Andy Strudwick and Matt Franks from Brewday
Jack Winter, Scott and Danny from Lenton Lane Brewery
Steph Brindley from Murphy and Sons
Todd Isbell from the International Centre for Brewing Science, University of Nottingham
Jessica Collins and Danny Pearson from Castle Rock Brewery
Lora Dyson-Somers from Magpie Brewery
Tom from Bang the Elephant
Ross Bolton from Brewhouse and Kitchen
Mark McCallum from Dungeon Brewing
Lloyd Stringer from Crich Brewing
Simon Wisher from Grumpy Fish Brewing
Clare Grantham from South Notts Real Ale Festival
Nicky Onorati from Pub People
Steve Cook from Cock & Hoop
Aimee Harbison-Roper from The Barrel Drop
Lizzie Meakin from Brew Tavern
John Blankley and Danielle Jeffery from Nottingham CAMRA
Rachael Van Oudheusden, Amy Brooks and Alice Henley from No Half Measures
Evan Harvey, keen beer enthusiast
Mark Wootton, winner of Hop Idol 2023
Tom Burwood-Ansell, Hop Idol 2023 runner up
