Champion Draught American Beer at the Great British Beer Festival

2009 Medal Winners

Competition Details

Each year CAMRA invites American breweries to enter the Champion American Beer at the Great British Beer Festival Competition.  The competition is the longest running and largest competition for American cask-conditioned beers.  The competition grows each year as we add more regional partners across the country that assist with consolidation transportation logistics.

The American Beer showing at GBBF 2009 was the largest yet.  We sent 52 firkins of beer from 26 breweries in 8 states across the country.  The beers were all entered in the Champion American Beer at GBBF competition, and were also served at the Bieres sans Frontieres International Beer Bar at CAMRA's Great British Beer Festival at Earl's Court in London.

Here's how it works: There is no cost to enter the competition, just a beer donation, and delivery of the beer to New England!  You don't even need to provide the firkin.  CASC, the presenters of the New England Real Ale eXhibition cask conditioned beer festivals, donates the use of their cooperage. CAMRA covers the cost to ship empty cooperage to participating brewers, who then fill it and ship their filled cask(s) to the overseas shipping consolidation point in the Boston area. With CAMRA's help, we then forward the beer to London where the competition is held at the Great British Beer Festival.

The largest obstacle to participation is the ability to ship filled firkin to New England for forwarding.  The fine folks at Stone Brewing Company and Rogue Ales & Spirits have genorously worked with us to bring West Coast beers across the country.  We are always looking for more help in this area.  If you are interested in entering the competition, and have distribution channels to New England, we are looking for more partners to help us expand the geographic scope of the competition.

Registration for GBBF 2010 will begin in the Spring.  In the meantime, if you are interested in becoming a logistics partner, please contact Mike Labbe, CAMRA's American Beer Coordinator, via email at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Cheers,

Mike