Alaskan Brewing Company picked up a bronze medal in the Smoke Beer category at the nation’s largest beer competition on Saturday.
The Brewers Association awarded the medal to the Alaskan Smoked Porter at the Great American Beer Festival in Boulder, Colo.
The Juneau-based brewery started making Smoked Porter in 1988, when it won a gold medal at the festival. Since then it’s become the winningest beer in the annual competition, with 21 medals.
Alaskan Brewing Communication Manager Andy Kline says Smoked Porter is a complex beer that keeps winning due to its flavor profile, which changes as the beer ages.
“The smoke characteristic goes from being very forward when it’s a fresh beer to kind of backing down and allowing for other properties of the beer to come forward, so you get a lot of black current or raisin flavors, some vanilla – those kinds of flavors start coming through as the beer ages,” Kline says.
The 2013 Smoked Porter was awarded the medal this weekend. Alaskan Brewing will release the 2014 batch on Nov. 1.
Besides Smoked Porter, the brewery also submitted its Icy Bay IPA, Hopothermia, Imperial Red and Freeride APA in the competition.
Anchorage-based Broken Tooth Brewery received a bronze medal for its Belgian-style ale, Darth Delirium.
