Crazy, crazy, crazy. That’s all I can keep thinking about since this past Saturday, July 4th. We most definitely celebrated America, but the day was made extra sweet by the news out of Ohio: SBC’s Black Eye Imperial Porter won GOLD at the US Open Beer Championship.

Consider this: Over 4,000 beers were entered in all beer categories this year with over 20 international breweries from the Czech Republic to China competing this year. Many of America’s largest and most respected craft breweries competed in the US Open, making the win even sweeter for us here at Scratchtown. All judging of the event was done “blind”, meaning the origin and name of the beer tasted is unknown. Beer is judged on a number of aspects and scoring is completed by the judges to determine the winners. Results of this year’s US Open Beer Championship can be found at www.usopenbeer.com.

If you’ve had a chance to hang with us, drink our beers and see our great little community of Ord, you’ve heard us say this before: great beer can come from anywhere as long as the passion for making great beer exists. We’re one of the state’s smallest and most rural breweries and we’ve heard a litany of “insight” that we were crazy to open out here in the Sandhills, that there weren’t craft beer drinkers out here, that it was a fool’s errand.

The only fool’s errand is to not follow your passion, to not follow your heart and intuition when it calls. Our vision was to build a world-class brewery here in Ord, no excuses. And we’re well on our way.

So here is to great beer no matter where it comes from! Cheers (and congratulations to Mike, our Chief Brewing Officer)!