Goat Island racks up awards in beer championship

Published 5:15 am Thursday, September 14, 2017

The folks at Goat Island may have been in business barely long enough to wet their throats with their own product, but already they’re pulling in some serious recognition.

At the Alabama Craft Beer Festival and State Championships, held in Florence this past weekend, three of Goat Island’s recipes finished among the top beers in Alabama for their categories, and one — the brewery’s popular Richter’s Pils light golden pilsner — placed second among all the beers brewed statewide.

In a competition that saw 148 entries from ‘Bama-based breweries both large and small, that’s quite an accomplishment — especially for a startup brewery that’s only been in business for a year and a half.

“We were really excited about how we finished,” said Gery Teichmiller, one of the Cullman-based company’s founding partners. “We’re kind of young compared to a lot of these big guys in the state, so we were really proud. We were in the competition last year, and we did well, but we didn’t yet have that many beers.

“This year, we had more, and even though the competition this year was much, much tougher, for our Richter’s Pils to actually score second overall in the state — that was really phenomenal.”

Judging at the competition is blind, so the panel of expert judges — all brought in from out of state to kibosh any favoritism — relied solely on each beer’s character as they narrowed the field down to a small handful of finalists.

“It’s all done behind the scenes,” explained Goat Island brewmaster Paul White. “The judges are there for, like, twelve hours each day — and it was a full two-day process.”

Richter’s Pils finished just behind the overall top-rated beer: a small-batch, limited-run reserve beer crafted by Birmingham-based Avondale Brewery. But unlike its first-place competitor, Goat Island’s product is mass produced and distributed throughout the state.

“A big difference between a lot of these other guys and what we do is, the beers we submitted for competition are in production and they’re sold all over Alabama, whether at taps or, in the case of Richter’s Pils, in stores as well,” said White.

“Definitely, a goal of ours was to make really good beer available for a whole lot of people, and I’m just glad that we finally got there with the pilsner, which is the beer that you can walk into a grocery store and buy. Getting a great-tasting pilsner is tough; it’s kind of a trial-and-error process, so this has definitely been one of the highlights of my career here.”

Richter’s Pils also won a gold medal in the championship’s “lighter side” category, joining two other Goat Island products — Sipsey River Red and the Oktoberfest seasonal brew — each of which received a bronze medal in their categories.

Goat Island will commence a second canning run for Richter’s Pils later this month, replenishing a supply that’s sometimes been scarce at retail. As the brewery streamlines its production process, said Teichmiller, it plans to add Sipsey River Red into the canning mix.

“We’ll be canning agin on September 28, so there’ll be plenty of Richter’s Pils back in the market after that,” he said. “But we’re going to follow that up with the Sipsey River Red, which we hope to get out into market, if nothing else, by the first of the year.”

With White at the helm, Goat Island’s future — and its reputation for quality — is in good hands, Teichmiller added.

“Paul — he’s a young guy. He came to us, and he’d never brewed in his life,” Teichmiller said. “I’m sure he drank some beer when he was in the military, but he’d never done home brewing or anything like this at all. But he came with a microbiology degree from Auburn University — which is actually a really useful thing to have — and he got interested quick.

“Just in the short time that he’s been here, he’s pretty much learned everything I can teach him. He’s spent his time studying and getting information, whether from books or other brewers. He spends I-don’t-know how many hours a week just working to increase his knowledge, and to bring that along to improve our recipes. He’s an asset, for sure.”

Visit goatislandbrewing.com to learn more about the brewery’s history and goings-on, and find Goat island on Facebook at facebook.com/goatislandbrewing.

Benjamin Bullard can be reached by phone at 256-734-2131 ext. 145.