Wormtown Brewery 4th Anniversary Worcester Party

Wormtown Brewery Brewmaster Ben Roesch stands with a freshly canned Be Hoppy beer at the brewery on Park Avenue.

(Sam Bonacci, MassLive.com)

WORCESTER — The Wormtown Brewery beat out powerhouses of the brewing world such as Samuel Adams, Stone Brewing, Yuengling and Saranac Brewing to take home the title of Grand National Champion in the 2014 U.S. Open Beer Championship.

“We try our best to make the best beers we can and to get that recognition on the national level is icing on the cake," said Wormtown Brewery Master Brewer Ben Roesch. "The brewing team all really works hard and to have us all be recognized like this is something great to cherish.”

The announcement reached Roesch at noon on the fourth of July. The brewery had won three gold medals and one silver in a face-off with breweries from as far away as Australia and Iceland in addition to the overall win. Roesch immediately reached out to all the employees of the brewery to give them the good news.

"It's pretty surreal," said Roesch. "I sent it out in a group text message ... so I am sure it was pretty cool because they found out while they were surrounded by their family and friends on the Fourth of July."

Wormtown Brewery 4th Anniversary Worcester Party 6 Gallery: Wormtown Brewery 4th Anniversary Worcester Party

The win by the brewery that opened in 2010 took place against competition that included the oldest brewery in the world that was founded in 1040. It is akin to the 1980 Olympic hockey win by the U.S. team, said Wormtown Partner David Fields.

"For a brewery of our size, 3,000 barrels, we make great beer. Ben and his staff are extremely talented ... but it's literally like the U.S. hockey team beating the Russians in the 1980 Olympics," he said.

The blind taste-test competition judged beers across 81 categories. Wormtown took home the gold in the Imperial IPA, French/Belgian Ale and American IPA categories winning with Hopulence, Biere de Miele and Be Hoppier, respectively. Roesch said beating out the Western breweries in the IPA category was a feat, but that receiving the awards they did in the French and Belgian beer categories was truly unexpected. Wormtown also took home a silver in the French / Belgian Saison category with their ALS Farmhouse Fundraiser beer.

“Those were experiments for us and to have those win medals was great for us,” said Roesch who explained the freshness of the local ingredients plays a huge role in the taste of the brewery's beer.

Those small batch beers, with only 20 kegs of each produced, were the first time the brewery had worked with those kinds of flavors, said Roesch. Blind taste-test competitions like this allow breweries to gauge their products in a direct comparison with others.

“It is a great way to find what people are thinking about and steer us towards something in the future we can do on a bigger scale," said Roesch.

The timing of the award could not have worked out better with the upcoming move to their new Shrewsbury Street location in a month and a half, said Roesch and Fields. The new facility will drastically increase production while also offering a tasting area, they said. The new facility will also set the groundwork for expanding the breweries distribution outside of Massachusetts, said Roesch.

For now, though, there are plans to celebrate their accomplishments. A short day on Friday with some Wormtown beers at a lake-side location should do the trick, said Fields.