The Golden Pints 2013

Time to round-up the best of beer in 2013. As we have done for the last few years, Andy Mogg from Beer Reviews and I invite anyone and everyone to share their favourite beers and pubs from the last year.

This time around we’ve made a few updates to the categories, reflecting a few changes in British beer: we’ve broken UK draught beer into cask and keg; we’ve added categories for new breweries and new bar openings; there’s one for collaboration brews, as these are very common now; and there’s a category for the best smartphone app.

We also changed the name of the Best Beer Twitterer in the honour of Simon Johnson, who passed away earlier this year. He had a clean sweep of wins in that category every year that we’ve done the Golden Pints, so it seems like a good way to remember his impact.

Feel free to answer with one word for each category or with whole sprawling paragraphs. Give runner-up choices if you wish, or even top 10s in each category. Blog them, tweet them, paste them into the blog comments below – however you want to do it. The ‘UK’ focus can easily be changed to whatever country you are based in. And you can use the Golden Pints logo when you post.

Here are the categories for this year’s Golden Pints.

·         Best UK Cask Beer

·         Best UK Keg Beer

·         Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer

·         Best Overseas Draught Beer

·         Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer

·         Best Collaboration Brew

·         Best Overall Beer

·         Best Branding, Pumpclip or Label

·         Best UK Brewery

·         Best Overseas Brewery

·         Best New Brewery Opening 2013

·         Pub/Bar of the Year

·         Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2013

·         Beer Festival of the Year

·         Supermarket of the Year

·         Independent Retailer of the Year

·         Online Retailer of the Year

·         Best Beer Book or Magazine

·         Best Beer Blog or Website

·         Best Beer App

·         Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer

·         Best Brewery Website/Social media

·         Food and Beer Pairing of the Year

Get them posted by the end of 2013 and we’ll try and do a round-up early in 2014!