The next time you stop by Fifty West, be sure to offer up your congratulations to their brew team for their most recent accolade.  The brewery walked away from this years Great American Beer festival in Denver with Cincinnati’s only award.  They came out of the Scotch Ale category which had 76 entries with a bronze medal for their “Going Plaid” Scotch Ale.

Going Plaid

This beer comes in around 8.5% ABV.  It’s smooth and easy drinking… absolutely delicous.  The best part about this beer for me, though, comes from the first Cincy Brewcast we did with the brewery.

We were sitting down with Blake Horsburgh and Bobby Slattery, talking beer (of course) and Mike brought up the question of what beers they’d made that they were really proud of, that it seemed people just didn’t care about?

Gnarly Gnome is drinking the scotch ale… Going Plaid… It’s our worst selling beer I think to date. But, it’s great… it’s strong, it’s malty, rich, sweet, caramelly, toasty, nutty, bready – all those flavors… and it just doesn’t sell well…

Do yourself a favor and go back and listen to the last 20 minutes of Volume 2, Episode 1… there’s some really great stuff in there about the beer.  It really makes me that much happier to see them with a medal around their necks for it.  Clearly… they were wrong to some degree.  This beer is not only appreciated, it’s award winning.  Maybe this will push the consumers of Cincinnati to branch out and try it and appreciate it!

When you team this up with their last win at the World Beer Cup (which took place on the same night as the opening of their massive production facility) the brewery is on a bit of a roll lately.  They are very quick to mention that both their Gold Medal winning 10&2 Barleywine and their Bronze medal winning Going Plaid are currently tucked away in bourbon barrels… just waiting to hit your lips.

If you haven’t been down to the production facility yet… that’s pretty crazy, and you need to do that.  You also need to try this beer when you see it!