American craft-beer fans are familiar with a pair of professional brewing competitions coordinated by national trade organization, the Brewers Association. Not only are those contests, the Great American Beer Festival and its international counterpart, the World Beer Cup, the largest events of their kind on the planet, but they are held on U.S. soil. But other major competitions take place beyond our borders which are well known in their home countries or continents. One of the biggest and most significant is the annual European Beer Star Awards.
Similar to the aforementioned U.S. events, this 20-year-old competition assembles well-versed judges to analyze the merits and shortcomings of multiple beers in a variety of style categories, awarding winners highly coveted gold, silver and bronze medals. While not heavily entered by San Diego County brewing companies, the European Beer Star’s yearly winners lists typically features a handful of local beers. This year, just one San Diego operation medaled, but they did so in one of the most entered categories: Hazy India Pale Ale.
That beer was Turtle Town, a hazy IPA brewed by Serra Mesa-based Hodad’s Brewing and developed in collaboration with fermentationists from another local operation, downtown San Diego-based Resident Brewing. This is the second European Beer Star Award for Hodad’s, which also took bronze in the International-style Lager category with its Surf Punk Baja Lager at the 2022 event.
“We are extremely proud that Turtle Town was awarded bronze in the Hazy IPA category,” says Hodad’s Director of Brewery Operations Marlow Myrmo. “We’re grateful to represent the San Diego beer community and stoked that Resident Brewing collaborated with us on this beer.”
Unlike most locals who have medaled at this competition, Myrmo and his colleagues were able to represent San Diego in-person, traveling to the European Beer Star Awards ceremony, which was held at BrauBeviale in Nuremberg, Germany on November 27.
In addition to picking up Hodad’s’ hardware, Myrmo and company spent their time across the Atlantic visiting historic breweries and beer locales, including Agustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Hoffbrau, Schneider Wiesse and Weihenstephaner in Germany, Stiegl in Austria, and Strahov Monastery Brewery in the Czech Republic. Taking in those groundbreaking, venerable operations provided Myrmo perspective and an even greater appreciation for those who have come before.
“I used this trip as an opportunity to visit many Old World breweries and learn more about the deep history and importance of beer to communities throughout Europe,” says Myrmo. “The beer scene in the U.S. is relatively young compared to the extensive beer history in Europe, which made being recognized at the largest and most prestigious competition on the continent, among such historic breweries, that much sweeter.”
Hodad’s has public venues at 5010 Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach, 945 Broadway in downtown San Diego and inside Petco Park in the East Village