“The Great American Beer Festival was one of my first craft-beer experiences after moving to Colorado. [It's] when I started homebrewing and allowed myself to indulge in the dream of owning a brewery someday,” says Scott Witsoe, the owner, head brewer, and dreamer at Wit’s End Brewing Company in Denver. “I spent many GABF sessions wishing I was on the other side of the table. I still think about this at each GABF and will never forget how lucky I am to be doing this.”
When Witsoe opened Wit’s End Brewing Co. (named as a play on his last name) in 2011, he started brewing one barrel at a time and quickly made a name for himself as one of Denver’s best brewers. This year, Witsoe and Wit’s End Brewer Pat McNerney accepted medals for the Jean-Claude Van Blond Ale—a bronze from World Beer Cup and the most recent gold medal for Belgian-Style Blonde Ale at GABF.
“This is Jean-Claude Van Blond,” Witsoe said proudly when he first poured me a sample in 2012. “It is 6.5 percent alcohol so it is stronger than your typical blonde ale is going to be in a craft brewery,” he explained. “I wanted something that had the complexity that you get from the Belgian yeast but still had the crispness of a blonde ale.”
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Jean-Claude Van Blond is brewed with mostly pilsner malts and a touch of oats. “It is late-hopped with Tettnang, perhaps a little aggressively for the style, to create a little more bitterness than commonly found,” says Witsoe. “The result is a spicy fruity beer that is very approachable and dry, but still has an underlying deep complexity for those of us who like to dissect flavors and swirl.”
Balance is always the goal in his brewing, Witsoe says. “I want all of the flavors to exist in harmony. I don’t mind playing with big flavors, but I want them all to co-exist and not have dominance. I don’t want anything cloyingly sweet or anything that’s just incredibly hoppy without the malt to back it up.”
To win a GABF medal for one of his balanced flagship beers was one of those moments that Witsoe will never forget, he says. It was augmented by the fact that seemingly half the audience stood up when he won. It really speaks to the craft-beer industry’s camaraderie when a state with more than 250 breweries is rooting for the guy brewing thirty-one gallons at a time.
We are so extremely excited! We enter competitions because we always hope and dream about winning something, but with no expectation that we will do so—there are so many great beers out there!”