Three Creeks Brewing Co. wins gold

Sisters' Three Creeks Brewing Co. recently captured a gold medal at a prestigious international brewing competition in Colorado, winning with their FivePine Chocolate Porter.

The Great American Beer Festival, now in its 30th year, is held in Denver and sponsored by the Brewers Association, a parent trade group for craft breweries. The competition and festival are billed as "the largest commercial beer competition in the world, and a symbol of brewing excellence."

Zack Beckwith, who has been brewing professionally for 10 years and is now head brewer at the brewery, told The Nugget that the competition at the GABF is "fierce," and that the Three Creeks team was both "surprised and happy" with their gold-medal result. In the event, 21 medals were awarded to breweries from Oregon, and only five of them gold, landing Three Creeks in rarified air.

This year, the competition saw a total of 7,227 entries divided into 96 categories, with a total of 161 different styles of beer up for judging. The 264 judges, composed of industry professionals certified in beer judging, hailed from 12 countries around the world.

Beckwith told The Nugget that, for brewing competitions, beers are entered into categories and specialties. The beers are then divided into flights, and judged. All judging is blind, and it requires winning several rounds of judging to make the final round. Three Creeks' take on the porter won out in the final round, defeating the Black Shack Porter entered by the Wachusett Brewing Company in Westminster, Massachusetts, and the Porter offered by the Back East Brewery of Bloomfield Connecticut.

In the porter category, there were 61 total entries from around the country.

In all, 286 medals were awarded to 254 different breweries from all 50 states and the District of Columbia during the competition.

Beckwith began his career as a self-taught home-brewer with a passion for the art and science of brewing. After graduating from college, he worked for breweries in Arizona and Portland before landing at Three Creeks. He described Three Creeks' winning entry as, "a porter first, with some chocolate," and said the gold-medal brew carries "a subtle chocolate note to round it out." He noted that the FivePine - named after the campus in Sisters - has been the brewery's best-selling beer for a number of years.

"It's a team effort here," Beckwith said of the impressive win over top-level competition. "The guys in the brewery and the production line had more to do with it than I did, but it really is a team win for us, and we're all pretty proud of it."