Two of the world's best beers come from Edmonton!

At this year’s World Beer Awards, Blind Enthusiasm took home two of the most coveted titles beer: World’s Best Gueuze for Grand Manifesto, and World’s Best Kriek for Fruitful Pursuits: Cherry!

Gueuze and Kriek are two types of traditional spontaneous beer. Perfected over centuries in Belgium’s Senne Valley, these beers require years of patience, coolships, intricate blending of barrels, and, in the case of Kriek, refermenting on whole sour cherries.

We actually don't use the terms gueuze or kriek to describe our beers, out of respect to our Belgian pals that have been brewing these beers for decades. But it's a huge honour, as a Canadian brewery, to take top honours in these categories.

This is the second year in a row that Fruitful Pursuits: Cherry has taken home the award of World's Best Kriek! We used hundreds of kilograms of sour cherries, grown in the Okanagan by our friends at Steve & Dan’s Fresh BC Fruit. This decadent fruit results in a beer with stunning, ruby red colour, ripe cherry, baking spice and marzipan flavours, and a tart, juicy acidity. Want to try it? Well you can shop this beer.

Grand Manifesto is a special blend of 2, 3 & 4 year spontaneous fermentation barrels. Our brewers carefully chose barrels cellared for additional years to showcase the unique characteristics that only time can provide. Our brewer has been saying that this is probably the best beer that we've ever released, and getting hardware that proves his point is pretty special! If you're keen on tasting it, expect depth and complexity, with bright fruitiness complemented by subtle salinity and savoury nuttiness, a round acidity and soft tannin, all balanced by the signature characteristics of spontaneous beer. You can get Grand Manifesto delivered to your door!

Cheers to our brewing team for this great achievement! Their hard work and dedication are being appreciated on a global scale.