Last weekend was the Oklahoma Craft Beer Festival and you know what that means! The 3rd annual Barrels and Mash awards!

We only went to one session this year (The VIP session on Saturday afternoon) which meant we had to pack as many tasty brew samples into the three hour time slot as we possibly could. This isn’t an easy feat as OCBF is filled with awesome people and I tend to get a bit chatty, especially after a drink or two. However, we were able to stay mostly focused and try a ton of great brews because we are beer drinking champions.

Reviewing last year’s awards I realized I attempted to remind my future self to actually bring some type of physical awards for our lucky winners, but 2018 Kris failed miserably at this. Let’s all root for 2019 Kris to now screw it up next year.

You can find the last two year’s awards here and here.

Anyways, let’s get into it and present planet Earth’s most coveted awards!

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Best Overall Beer: The Big Friendly’s Friendly Cherry

Joe Quinlin of the Big Friendly Beer Bus not only drives around in his kick ass converted school bus pouring favorites from local breweries, he also brews his own beers. He’s damn good at it too. Last year he took home the prize of Best Home Brew with his Bourbon Baby Beer, a 12% abv Imperial Stout aged with Bourbon soaked oak chips. This year he leveled up even more and ended up pouring my favorite beer of the whole festival, his Friendly Cherry, a sour ale with tart cherries.

Here’s were I attempt to explain this beer and not screw up any details:

Joe started off with a base beer which he then split in half and sent on their own journeys. One route utilized saison yeast and wine must and was then dry hopped with Nelson Sauvin and Hallertau Blanc. The other half was pitched with a few “bugs” including Lactobacillus and Brettanomyces along with some wine must then was hopped with Amarillo, producing a golden sour ale. Each of those two beers was also poured by the Big Friendly at OCBF.

Joe then blended those two beers 60/40 favoring the saison and added tart cherries to the mix. That’s where Friendly Cherry came from.

Crazy right? As complicated as all that sounds it produced a incredibly well balanced cherry sour with a ton of complexity and a really nice sweetness that was a departure from all the “how sour can we make this” beers in the world. The Brett was still young so not much of that came through, but I would be interested to see where this beer ends up after more of those vibes develop.

Best Homebrews: James Wilson and Donnie Russell 

It seems every year there are a couple homebrewers that outshine the rest, and this year was no exception. Ideally I would just talk about one but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention both James and Donnie in this category.

James Wilson has apparently been busy as he brought eight beers, a mead, and 5 ciders to OCBF. That’s ridiculous. While I didn’t try every single one of his offerings, I hit most of the beers and each one was incredibly solid. Among them were creative brews like the Rose Petal Blueberry Sour and Mango Blackberry Berliner Weisse. All complex and refreshing.

Next to James was Donnie, repping his brand Higher Animal Beer Co. Donnie brought Palm Tree Astronaut, a Porter with coffee, salted caramel, and toasted coconut and Little Fluffy Clouds, a double dry-hopped Northeast style Double IPA loaded with Citra and Mosaic hops. Both were amazing. Between these brews and others I’ve tried from Donnie in the past I believe that Higher Animal may not be on home brew row for much longer.

Best Brewery in Planning: The Big Friendly

Ok so I’m going to talk about Joe Quinlin a bit again along with his brother Will, currently a brewer at COOP Ale Works. The Quinlin brothers are planning on taking The Big Friendly name to a new level with a brick and mortar brewery.

While they weren’t formally listed as a “brewery in planning” at this year’s festival, Joe gave us the go ahead to mention their plans and given that Big Friendly beers always impress I couldn’t see talking about anyone else here.

I don’t know many details yet but this will be one I’ll be watching closely and cannot wait to watch these guys build their brewery!

Best Sign: Heirloom Rustic Ales

A departure from the standard issue white sign with black type, Zach French of Heirloom Rustic Ales went all punk rock on his sign and it was awesome. Starting with a few small cans of spray paint and some glittery stickers, Heirloom’s sign evolved as the festival marched on around it.

Eventually our own Kate’s art skills were recruited as she contributed her go-to onto the sign, a unicorn.

Not only was the sign great, but Zach’s beers never fail to impress. His Agrarian Lights was killer and was made with all Oklahoma ingredients including the yeast, hops, wheat, and barley. This guy is doing great things.

 

Best Refreshing Beer: Angry Scotsman’s Powder Keg 

I love talking to Ross from Angry Scotsman, and luckily I love drinking his beer too. Among his many pours this year was Powder Keg, a Belgian Witbier with lemongrass, gunpowder green tea, and fresh lemon zest. Light, flavorful, and tasty it was a great treat in the middle of the session and was a fantastic contrast to everything else on the list.

Best Biggest Tease: Anthem’s Pomp & Circumstance

Not only did Anthem Brewing Company’s booth at this year’s OCBF have a couple of fresh faces, there were some new labels too. In addition to sporting a new head brewer, the OKC brewery is rolling out a couple of brand new beers including Pomp, a bourbon barrel aged imperial stout and Circumstance… also a bourbon barrel aged imperial stout. The base beer is the same with the difference being the yeast. Pomp uses a Belgian yeast and Circumstance an American yeast.

Both of these beers were incredible and when I asked when I could buy them the answer was next year, which is a really long time from now. Ugh. Anthem will be releasing them as a mix 4-pack which is pretty cool and I can only hope that the final packaged product is as delicious as what they were pouring at the festival.

Best Crowd: Vanessa House French Toast Power’s Out

At 2:30 pm the handsome men over at Vanessa House started popping crowlers of their French Toast variant of Power’s Out, their vanilla stout. I strolled on over about 2:28 only to be greeted by a massive crowd of folks waiting for the pours to start. There was even a huge countdown which the crowd participated in before they mobbed the counter. The beer only lasted a few minutes and it was the only time this year I saw anything like it. Shortly after I watched many festival goers die inside as they were told the beer was gone. You snooze you lose, dude.

Best Guy that Kind of Looks like Kevin Durant: This guy

RIGHT!?

Best Beer Not From Here: Tupps DDH  IPA Series 2

Tupps Brewery from McKinney, Texas just started distributing to Oklahoma this month and they suprised me with their Double Dry Hopped IPA. I have to admit that all the massively dry-hopped East Coast IPAs are starting to run together a bit, but this one hit the right spot. I’ll be looking for this one on the shelves.

Best Alcoholic Sparkling Water: Truly Spiked and Sparkling

Of all the alcoholic sparkling waters that were spread across the hundreds of booths, this one took the cake with flavors like mixed berry, pomegranate, and lime. Owned and poured by Sam Adams this beverage scored well across all categories including clarity (water-like), carbonation (sparkling water-like), and alcohol content (it has alcohol in it).

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Well there you go. Another OCBF is in the books. I’ll try to remember some kind of actual trophy thing next year. We hope you all had as much fun as we did at this year’s festival and we’ll see you next year!