Earlier this year, we proudly received, from CAMRA, their Champion Best Bitter of East Anglia award for our Britannia.  This paved the way for Britannia to be nominated into the judging for the Champion Beer Of Britain awards, held each year in early August at the Great British Beer Festival, and despite being up against some very fine brews indeed - and more than several beers that should probably have been in Golden Ales category (not my words, but ones expressed to us and others on the day) - Britannia came away with a silver medal in the best bitters class.  This is no mean feat, giving the number of beers in the class, so we were much pleased.  In fact, so much so, I choked on my beer when our name was read out by Roger Protz.  This caused much cheering around us, which probably helped raise our profile slightly.  

Since then, the aforementioned Mr Protz has pubicly stated his disappointment at the fact there was only one proper best bitter in CBOB judging.  Now I don't know which beer he was referring to, but his reference to a best bitter needs to be beer brown rather than golden, and needs plenty of crystal malt certainly fits the recipe of Britannia, so maybe he did mean us?  Who knows?

So, wind forward to October, and up comes the SIBA Eastern Regional Beer Competition.  And Britannia hits gold again in the Best Bitters category (it won bronze in 2007), and then gets an overall bronze.  All this out of 130 or so beers from breweries ranging from established family brewers & plc's, down to newly started part time breweries. 

And on our return from the competition, an email awaits us with the results of the 2009 Hertfordshire Beer Competition.  This is a CAMRA arranged award, in which all the Hertfordshire breweries are invited to enter two beers of their choice.  This is our first year of entering this competition (it was rested for several years before being re-introduced last year, albeit without an entry from ourselves), and the winner was...  Well, it was Colleys Dog from Tring - which is a damn fine beer by anybodies standards - but we did get third place with Golden Plover, the first award for our biggest selling beer.  The other beer we entered was Polar Star, which, despite eliciting some almost orgasmic comments form many drinkers, has failed to hit the right buttons in terms of awards.  So it is extra nice to report that Polar Star came second.

All in all, there is at least one Britannia that seems to be doing well, and we'll certainly start some flag waving.  And look for the limited edition pump clips for Britannia, nicely trimmed out in silver.  You can't miss them, they're a bit dazzling...