Historic Barnsley Bitter takes home Overall Champion Gold in the SIBA North East Independent Beer Awards 2023

Acorn Brewery, best known for its popular Barnsley Bitter, blew judges away at claimed the ‘best of the best’ Overall Champion Gold award at the award ceremony over the bank holiday weekend.

It means the historic South Yorkshire recipe is in the running to be named one of the best in the country at the National Finals of the BeerX UK awards in Liverpool in 2023.

Collecting the Gold award for Barnsley was brewer Steve Bunting, who said: “Barnsley Bitter was one of the first beers we ever brewed - it's one of the beers we started the brewery with - and has a long heritage, using the original yeast strain from the orignal Barnsley Brewery from the 1850s. It's amazing that against such a wide variety of beer styles in the awards such a traditonal style could come out on top today.”

The prizes are judged by beer industry experts including master brewers, beer sommeliers and experienced beer judges, with only the very best beers awarded medals in these prestigious awards. A broad range of styles are judged, from modern heavily hopped IPAs, pale ales and speciality beers, to more traditional British style bitters, stouts and porters.

Anneli Baxter, SIBA’s competitions chair, congratulated the North East’s winners, saying: “Cask beer comes in a huge range of styles, strengths, colours and flavours, with some superb beers winning across the board - but it was great to see that a superbly brewed traditional bitter taking the top award today.”