Stonehouse Brewery has been named as one of the best brewers in the Wales and West region at the SIBA Independent Beer Awards

The Oswestry-based brewery took the top award in SIBA’s Wales and West Independent Beer Awards with their excellent session IPAs, including as four gold winners and two overall winners, which took place at Ludlow Festival.

“Sunlander” by Stonehouse brewery took home the overall Gold medal in the small pack (bottle and can) competition. Sunlander takes its name from the Australian hops used, very pale ale with a great balance of citrus and floral hops, and is named after a train from Brisbane to Cairns.

Shane and Alison Parr from Stonehouse Brewery were delighted with their bottled IPA win.

"It's really good to win," said Shane,

"It is good to start the summer with some good news.

"The competition was a blind testing against beers from other areas. We won eight awards in total, many of them for our bottles as we've recently started a new bottling line which makes them more consistent.

"But now that we've won the award we are able to put on our bottle labels that we have this accolade, and we'll be able to start pushing the products further afield.

"We've been making Sunlander for five years now, it's pale and refreshing and nicely balanced.

"We're through to the national finals which take place next year, and we won't be changing the beer at all –just adding an award to our labels!"

Guy Sheppard, SIBA’s competitions committee chair said: “Many congratulations to our two worthy overall winners, both of which happen to be session IPAs – Whoosh from Untapped and Sunlander by Stonehouse. Also big congratulations to all our winners across the categories. We had some excellent entries and overall the standard in Ludlow has been really high for all the beers.”

The SIBA Wales & West Independent Beer Awards judge a huge range of beers across a number of styles before the winners from each category go forward to an ‘Overall Champions’ final. It was this ‘best-of-the-best’ final that finds the best winners in cask and small pack, which judges cans and bottles side by side.