Email
Print
Cigar City Brewing wins gold in national beer competition
Staff photo by JEFF HOUCK
The India Pale Ale medal is the second of the year for Cigar City brewer Wayne Wambles, left, and owner Joey Redner.
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: October 1, 2009
Related Links
TAMPA - Think of it as The Little Brewery That Could.
In business in Tampa for only seven months, Cigar City Brewing won a gold medal this week at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver for its cedar-aged India Pale Ale, which mimics the warm aromas of cigar boxes and humidors.
The annual festival's National Beer Competition is the largest and most prestigious beer contest in the United States. This year's competition, held Saturday, featured 3,308 beers entered by 495 breweries in several categories. Of those, 78 beers were given gold medals.
Cigar City's Humidor Series India Pale Ale won gold in the "Wood-Aged Beer" category. The company entered seven of its styles in its first year of competing at the festival. The Humidor brew bested 32 other beers in the category.
It's the second award the brewery has won this year. In February, brewer Wayne Wambles won a first-place ribbon in the Atlanta Cask Ale Tasting for his Mayan Chocolate Imperial Stout.
The gold medal was the first won by brewery owner Joey Redner and the third for Wambles.
"I really had a good feeling about [the Humidor] beer, but there are so many factors that you don't know what the judges are looking for," Redner said Thursday.
Using cedar is rare in beer circles. Most breweries use oak to enhance their bolder-flavored beers. India Pale Ales, or IPAs, are usually not wood-aged.
Cigar City put cigar box cedar directly into the fermenter with a batch of its Jai Alai IPA for about two weeks.
"It's not a heavy flavor, but it is a prominent flavor," Redner said.
Festival judge and beer writer Melissa Cole wrote on her blog (girlsguidetobeer.blogspot.com), that, "The spice and aroma it imparts to the beer is absolutely incredible. The base beer IPA itself was technically flawless and the pepper, sandalwood, vanilla, cinnamon, cedar, leather and tobacco notes that poured off it were more akin to a rum descriptor than a beer but still incredible nonetheless."
Finding the small-batch Humidor IPA on store shelves may be difficult, Redner said. Some may still be in stock at such stores as Total Wine & More and Whole Foods Market in Tampa and Rolling Oats Market in St. Petersburg, as well as Kingdom Liquors in Brandon and Luekens Liquors in Dunedin.
Reporter Jeff Houck can be reached at (813) 259-7324.
TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online ©2009 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC. A Media General company. | Member Agreement | Privacy Statement | Work With Us
