Twelve members of the British Guild of Beer Writers picked up a string of prizes and honourable mentions at the annual awards ceremony held by the BGBW’s sister organisation, the North American Guild of Beer Writers, last weekend (October 17).
Pete Brown, the BGBW’s chairman, won the top prize for Best Book with Craft: An Argument, the book he wrote during Lockdown, heading a clean sweep in the category for BGBW writers, with Mark Dredge in second place for his book A Brief History of Lager: 500 Years of the World’s Favourite Beer and Lars Marius Garshol third with Historical Brewing Techniques: The Lost Art of Farmhouse Brewing. Lars Marius also won the Best Blog category with his Larsblog.
Breandán Kearney was another BGBW-member first place winner in the Best Historical Writing category for his piece Flying With Clipped Wings — West Kerry Brewery, County Kerry, Ireland published in Good Beer Hunting.
In the Best Technical Writing category, BGBW members Lily Waite, with Foeder Gatherers — Tracing the Growing Popularity of Beer’s New Favorite Vessel and Claire Bullen with A Fire Being Kindled — The Revolutionary Story of Kveik, Norway’s Extraordinary Farmhouse Yeast, both for Good Beer Hunting, took second and third places respectively. Lily Waite was also awarded third place in the Best Travel Writing category for another piece in Good Beer Hunting, Where the Streets are Paved with Bottle Caps — Exploring Berlin’s Nascent Craft Beer Scene.
Matthew Curtis came third in the Best Beer Review category for “Where the Wild Things Are — The Joy of Harvey’s Sussex Best which appeared in Pellicle Magazine, and also received an honourable mention in the Technical Writing category for a piece in Good Beer Hunting, Welcome to Fringe Division — The Innovative Malting Technology That’s Producing Better Beer.
Martyn Cornell picked up second places in two categories, Best Travel Writing, for If you want craft beer in Munich, it’s pure Helles on his Zythophile blog, and for the Zythophile blog itself, in the Best Beer Blog category.
Closing out the Best Beer Blog category, Em Sauter came in third place with Pints and Panels.
Adrian Tierney-Jones also featured in the Travel Writing category, with an honourable mention for his piece in Good Beer Hunting A Lifetime Spent Weathering the Storm — Adnams Brewery in Suffolk, U.K.
Jonny Garrett received an honourable mention in the Best Beer Review category with A Wake-Up Call — Mikkeller’s Beer Geek Breakfast in Good Beer Hunting.
Finally, Eoghan Walsh’s Lockdown podcast, Cabin Fever, received an honourable mention in the Best Beer Podcast/Broadcast category.
Details of all the awards winners are available here: https://reportersnotebook.org/2020/10/17/nagbw-announces-2020-awards-in-beer-journalism/ The awards this year took place “virtually”, with participants connected by Zoom.
Thank you to Martyn Cornell for preparing this release on behalf of the Guild.