What makes a beer award worthy? We ask our local breweries

Apr. 22—ROCHESTER — The breweries in Rochester have been producing high quality, award-winning beer for years, but what makes a beer award worthy?

There are many types of beer and they all have their own flavor profiles, mouth feels and qualities that make it unique. Personal preference is also a key aspect in deciding whether a beer is "good." So, how is a beer truly judged?

Forager Brewery is on Untappd, an app that helps locate and recommend breweries nearby. On the app, more than 37 of its brews have received high honors in the state of Minnesota, including an impressive eight earning national recognition.

"This recognition stands as a remarkable testament to the dedication and craftsmanship of our entire brewing team," said Annie Henderson, owner of Forager Brewery, in a press release. "Behind the scenes, the team works tirelessly to ensure that every facet of the brewing process is executed with precision and care. From meticulously selecting the finest ingredients to perfecting brewing techniques, the brewers spare no effort to deliver exceptional brews that surpass expectations."

Each type of beer has their own standards that they follow when being judged. They must follow certain guidelines to be classified as a certain type of beer and that is the first thing most judges will look at. Afterwards, flavor holds the most weight when being judged in competition.

"I think the overarching thing, whether you're looking at it, does it fit into a standard or do I like the way it is or do I like the way it tastes?" said Ann Fahy-Gust. "Is it going to be a beer that doesn't have any off flavors? Those flavors can come from lack of quality control in the brewery or in your cleaning processes or from using raw materials that aren't good quality. So old materials that maybe get a little rancidity to them or something like that. So all of those matter when you're trying to make a beer that tastes good."

Fahy-Gust has been in many beer competitions and is the master brewer for South by Southeast Brewing Company. She has judged for national and international competitions and uses the knowledge she learned from judging to make beer for the Pine Island brewery.

There are a lot of qualities that go into a good taproom and brewery beyond just good beer. The breweries in Southeast Minnesota have been well received and loved especially for their drinks and taproom atmospheres.

"We won a few awards and one of the awards we won that meant the most to us was we won a bronze medal, the Great American Beer Fest, which is like the biggest beer conference in the country," said Steve Finnie, the owner of Little Thistle Brewing in Rochester. "It's held annually in Denver, Colorado, so it's the best of the best, the best in the country. So we won a bronze there and we were delighted, so that was really justification to me that I could maybe be a little less hard on myself about you know, just trying to work so hard and make quality beer and justify that we were doing a good job."

Finnie attributes the brewery's success to its beer, but also its taproom and customer service. Workers know the key to success isn't just in one thing and Finnie wants Little Thistle to have it all with a focus on good beer.

"For us, the focus is always on quality beer number one," said Finnie. "So, the beer has to be good. You still have to have all these other components in a business. The beer has to be good. You have to have great customer service. You have to have a good space with social media. So it's all part of this big equation. For me, number one, beer quality has to be very good."

A huge part of brewing a high quality beer is in sanitation.

"There's certain practices within a brewery and it's all about sanitation, having everything cleaned and having great practices to make sure first and foremost that you have a whole bunch of things in place, such that your equipment, and anything that touches the area is completely sanitary," said Finnie. "That's an essential first step."

In terms of what makes a beer worthy of an award, the qualifications are not as clear as one might think. Everyone is looking for something different and each type of beer might have different desired tastes, alcohol content and fullnesses.

"You want it to look good and you want it to be presentable," said Finnie. "The only exceptions are hazy IPAs that are kind of real and hazy, but a lot of other beers, you want them to be crystal clear. You want to look good, first, smell good and taste good, and some don't have as much aroma so the smell might not be as important. You definitely want to want them to have some body or mouthfeel or having some kind of thickness to have substance. So it's important that the flavor that is there is flavorful."

The best way to ensure the best flavor is by using quality ingredients. In addition to raw ingredients, the water used in a brew also has to be perfect. Beer is 98% water and using city water with extra additives can lower the quality of a beer.

"You can't make good beer if you don't have good ingredients and or your raw materials have to be really good as well," said Fahy-Gust. "So knowing that your suppliers are giving you a really good malt and that it is in that quality parameter for a Pilsner or Vienna or whatever and they're giving you data to be able to make your decisions on how much malt to use and those kinds of things. Raw ingredients are our key. Because if you have to start off with bad material, you have no hope."

Keeping a lower alcohol percentage in drinks is also important so that people can enjoy a drink or two and still go about their days like normal. The lower content also allows for clientele to enjoy the taproom environment and keep it a lowkey gathering location unlike a club or bar.

It's also a main goal to replicate it exactly every time so the customer also knows what to expect when they order a drink.

"Once you have a beer that people love you need to make sure that you brew it the same way every single time," said Fahy-Gust. "In reality, you need to make sure that you keep on brewing it or you start to lose the people that liked it."

The brewing process is very specific. Each beer has a recipe and process that cannot be shortcutted or the results will not be the same each time.

"If you want to do it, you do it right," said Finnie. "You do well, and it takes time. You can't rush a beer. Beer is a process where fermentation occurs and it can go at its own pace, and you need to let it run its course. ... There's a lot of science to it. So it may look easy, but there's a ton of work behind the scenes to have consistency. Because that's the other thing about quality, our goal is every time they come back, it tastes so you have to work hard to achieve that. It's just doing the same thing and repetition time after time after time again."