The Great American Beer Festival 2015 is over and the oldest craft brewery in Texas has been recognized once again for its craft brewing excellence.
Saint Arnold Brewing, located in Houston Texas, is no stranger to awards and recognition and this latest Great American Beer Festival competition resulted in yet another piece of medal to add to the brewery’s growing collection. Saint Arnold Weedwacker was awarded the festival’s highest honor, taking home a Gold Medal in the German Style Wheat Ale Category. This is the third year in a row that Weedwacker has won an award at the prestigious Denver- based festival and Saint Arnold owner/founder/brewer Brock Wagner couldn’t be happier with the beer and his hard- working crew:
“It is a great feeling for our entire team when we bring home any medal from the GABF, but a gold medal is especially gratifying,” said Wagner. “Winning medals is harder and harder every year as more breweries open and the number of beers entered increases. We enjoyed celebrating our win with all of the other Texas breweries and there were a lot of us in Denver last week.”
With this Gold Medal, Saint Arnold Brewing can now claim a combined total of 21 GABF Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals, the most of any craft brewery in the state. Perhaps equally impressive, in a coincidental sort of way, is that the brewery also turned 21 years old this year. That’s a long time for any business to survive and it’s a testament to the high quality that the good guys and gals at Saint Arnold Brewing strive to achieve each working day.
Saint Arnold Weedwacker was released in 2010 and was originally part of the brewery’s “Movable Yeast” series of beer. Educational in nature, this special series was intended to show the public how different beer tastes when something as supposedly simple as yeast is changed to a different strain. Saint Arnold Weedwacker actually uses another Saint Arnold beer, Fancy Lawnmower, as its base but is then brewed using Bavarian hefeweizen yeast. The result clearly illustrates just how great a difference yeast makes and why it is so important to the taste and character of the final product. Weedwacker was so well received, it became part of the regular Saint Arnold lineup the following year.
With 21 Great American Beer Festival medals under its belt, Saint Arnold further solidifies its claim as one of the all- time great craft breweries in Texas and the nation. We at Great Beer Now congratulate our hometown brewing heroes at Saint Arnold for this latest victory and we’re confident there will be many more in the coming years.
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