The World Beer Cup, a biennial global beer competition, announced its winners in 96 categories on Friday evening from the Craft Brewers Conference in Philadelphia. Needless to say, New Mexico breweries had another excellent showing.

First up, Nexus built off their silver medal for Honey Chamomile Wheat at the Great American Beer Festival last fall by taking gold in the Honey Beer category at the WBC. Brewer Kaylynn McKnight saw her beer beat out 54 other entries in the category.

Then came the onslaught of the summer porch beers, as we like to call them, claiming medals in three different categories.

Marble’s Pilsner snagged a bronze in the Kellerbier or Zwickelbier category amid 58 other entries. Meanwhile, La Cumbre’s recently canned BEER made a bold statement by earning gold in the International-Style Lager category, beating out 102 other entries. Canteen’s High Plains Pils followed that by picking up silver in the Bohemian-Style Pilsner category out of 64 other entries.

For the upcoming summer heat, it’s hard to beat any of those beers.

An odd moment came in the Australian- or International-Style Pale Ale category, when Bosque took home a bronze. The beer was simply listed as “Bosque IPA” during the ceremony. (The gentleman announcing, who also does GABF and whose name escapes us, also continues to pronounce Bosque as “Bosk.” Oy.) It turned out to be Riverwalker, which we’re not sure how that happened up in that category, but hey, a medal is a medal, right?

After a long period of quiet in the nearly 2-hour long webcast, Boxing Bear’s Chocolate Milk Stout did it again. After taking silver at GABF, this time it moved up one notch and brought home the gold in the Sweet Stout or Cream Stout category, beating out 62 other entries.

While no New Mexico beer could claim a medal in the American-Style IPA category (a whopping 275 entries), the second biggest category, Imperial IPA (181 entries), saw a local brewery bring home a medal — Second Street’s Trebuchet IPA captured a silver, bringing to a close another great day for our local breweries.

Congratulations to all the breweries! Everybody, head out this weekend, whether to your favorite of the seven, your nearest craft beer bar with one (or more) of them on tap, or head down to the Blazin’ Brewfest and raise a pint (or two) to all of our award winners!

Cheers!

— Stoutmeister