Sept. 26--In what was an otherwise a quiet day for Chicago-area breweries at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Piece Brewery and Pizzeria was honored Saturday with its 14th medal during the last 14 years.
Take Back the Streets, a double pale ale that was briefly on tap at the brewpub this summer, won a bronze medal in the Other Strong Beer category, among 43 entries.
Reached by phone in Denver, where he was attending the awards, Piece brewmaster Jonathan Cutler said he only submitted Take Back the Streets after deciding another potential entry was lacking.
He called the beer "an oddball strong ale" that didn't fit any conventional category: hop-forward, but with a thicker and more malt-forward body than the typical imperial India pale ale. After winning the award, plans to re-brew Take Back the Streets will be accelerated, Cutler said; a fresh batch should be tapped within the next couple of weeks.
Piece has also won nine awards since 2002 at the World Beer Cup -- which like GABF is sponsored by the Colorado-based Brewers Association -- and is arguably the city's most consistently award-winning brewery.
"There's no trick to it," Cutler said. "I'm my own harshest critic. If I think I can make something a little bit better, then I try it. If it doesn't work, I try something else."
Other local winners at the nation's largest beer festival included Tinley Park's Hailstorm Brewing, which won a silver medal in the Bock beer category (among 38 entries) for Rock Out With Mai Bock Out; Evanston brewpub Smylie Brothers Brewing Co., which won bronze in the Fruit Wheat Beer category (69 entries) for a hibiscus-blueberry-blackberry hefeweizen called Purple Line; and Champaign's Destihl Brewery, which won bronze in the Wood and Barrel-Aged Strong Stout category (128 entries) for Dosvidanya, a Russian imperial stout.
jbnoel@tribpub.com
