Burleigh Brewing Company’s Black Giraffe lager has been awarded a gold medal at the World Beer Championships in the United States.

The coffee-infused beer scored 94 out of a possible 100 under the US-based Beverage Tasting Institute’s scoring system. Black Giraffe was the highest ranking beer in the Specialty Beer category, placing it ahead of Boston Beer Company’s Samuel Adams 2009 Utopias (93 points) and Samuel Adams Triple Bock (92 points). The score put the beer in the Institute’s ‘exceptional’ category, and was just one point shy of ‘superlative’.

The tasting panel described the beer as, “Very dark brown colour. Rich and dimensional roasted coffee, bakers chocolate, and dried fruit aromas and flavours with a dry, zesty medium-full body and a long, pure and pervasive barista approved finish. A superb coffee beer with a solid caffeine kick.”

The World Beer Championships are run annually in a series of style-based tasting sessions in a dedicated tasting lab at the Beverage Testing Institute (BTI) in Chicago. Unlike most beer competitions which judge all beers in all categories in a very short time frame, the World Beer Championships reviews a different category of beer every other month and blind tastes no more than thirty-five beers a day with a small cadre of certified judges. The awards have not attracted many Australian entrants over the past few years, but a scan of the medals awarded reveals a who’s who of US craft breweries.

This the third time in just a few months Burleigh Brewing’s beers have been awarded Gold, with Duke Pale Ale and My Wife’s Bitter receiving the accolade in June.

Black Giraffe is the brewery’s second release from their Bit On The Side Dept, and was developed as a combined effort between, Brennan Fielding, the Burleigh Brewing Co Brewmaster and coffee expert, Kenton Campbell, CEO of Zarraffa’s Coffee.

Burleigh Brewing Co CEO, Peta Fielding, said this latest win is especially exciting because this time they’re sharing it with Zarraffa’s Coffee.

“Obviously our medals are all a Burleigh Brewing team effort, but this time it feels more like a ‘team sport’ than an ‘individual gold’ as we get to celebrate with Zarraffa’s Coffee – afterall, they helped us to select the coffee and roasted it to perfection!”

Kenton Campbell, Zarraffa’s Coffee Founder and CEO, said he was interested in the Black Giraffe project from the moment Brennan first mentioned it.

“I saw this as the perfect business partnering – a micro brewery and a speciality coffee company – creating a new and exciting product.”

“Together, our brands are two of the best in our respective industries and this partnership has amplified that.”

“Doing the beer in itself was amazing. To have it be so amazing and now on the worldwide stage, I’m privileged to be a part of it.”

“It’s great that smaller businesses, coming together, can achieve such wonderful things.”

Burleigh Brewing’s limited releases from their ‘Bit on the Side Dept’ come packaged in dinner-size, 650ml screen-printed, collectible bottles.

Black Giraffe is available at bottle shops and pubs and clubs throughout Australia. For a location in your area, please visit the Burleigh Brewing Co website www.burleighbrewing.com.