WV’s most awarded beer does it again

West Virginia currently has what could arguably be America’s best Robust Porter. Seriously.

How so, you ask? Anytime a West Virginia brewery can send a beer all the way out to Denver to America’s top and toughest beer competition and bring home a medal, it’s a beautiful day. But when that brewery can send the same beer out there in multiple years and win medals in more than one of them, that is truly exceptional.

Well, that’s just what Big Timber Brewing in Elkins has done with its Porter at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF).

Winning medals shows a lot

Competing against other porters from around the country at GABF is not just competing against any random porters. Brewers don’t send a beer out to GABF unless they think that beer is good enough to compete against the very best in the style category. Entering a beer in the Great American Beer Festival Competition is not easy or inexpensive for a brewer.

Unlike a number of other competitions, ones that may hand out a whole bunch of medals in a style category, GABF awards only three medals in each beer category (one gold, one silver, and one bronze). It doesn’t matter if there are 150 entries in the category, there will only be three medals awarded each year.

BTB Porter rises to top

Here’s the evidence that Big Timber Porter has proven that it might just be the best Robust Porter made by an American brewery. BTB Porter took the Silver Medal at GABF in 2022, becoming the first beer from a West Virginia brewery to win a coveted GABF medal. Now, to follow up with a GABF bronze medal in 2025 is a stellar accomplishment. It’s a feat that many brewers attempt, but few achieve. Big Timber’s accomplishment should make West Virginia beer lovers very proud.

But wait, there’s more. The evidence that BTB Porter is competitive, not only in America, but also worldwide, is demonstrated by its recent medal wins at the World Beer Cup. Against other beers in its category, BTB Porter took home the Gold Medal in 2024 and the Bronze Medal in 2023. Most impressive.

Q&A with Matt

BrilliantStream asked Matt Kwasniewski about these impressive accomplishments for his Porter. Here are the responses from Matt, who is BTB’s founder, co-owner, and head brewer.

Question 1.  It is very difficult to repeat making it to the medal round at GABF for the same beer. Were you surprised to see your Porter win another medal at GABF this year? Describe your reaction.

ANSWER 1:  It is always a great surprise to medal at GABF.  At this point, Porter has done so well that we feel pretty good about its chances to place, but that goes to show the consistency in the judging process.  For anyone that has judged beer before, when you have several really good examples side by side, it can really be splitting hairs and there is a lot of back and forth to find the best example.

Question 2. What do you believe are the primary reasons that Big Timber Porter has been so successful in medaling at major national beer competitions? 

ANSWER 2: I think a big part of that is the consistency of the recipe.  We are always trying to make changes to our beers to improve them, and with porter we’ve been happy enough with the bulk of the recipe, that we are only making slight tweaks.  We’ve really dived into not just the different types of malts in the beer, but how different the same type of malted barley is between different maltsters or different crop years.  Another thing we’ve noticed is that Porter tends to get better with a little age on, it almost ripens to help the malts kind of meld together where a young batch, which is still good, just feels like not all of the flavors from the different malts are quite playing together yet.

Question 3. You’ve been making the porter ever since you’ve had a commercial brewery. Describe a little about the beer’s journey to becoming a medal winning beer. What tweaks have you made to ingredients and process since the early days. Who have these ideas for improvements come from, you or your brewer?

ANSWER 3:  I think I touched on a lot of this in the previous question, but to clarify a little, the recipe has remained pretty much the same since I dialed in my homebrew recipe. That’s the advantage we have with Porter though is that we’ve made, for the most part, the same recipe so long, that we’ve had this history with it, and we’ve been able to really get to know it.  

As far as where the ideas come from, it really doesn’t matter.  If someone brings up a good or interesting point, we’ll discuss it, and see if it’s something we think needs changed or can be changed.  It could be from a brewer, a vendor, a customer that sends us a facebook message, it really doesn’t matter as long as the team thinks it has legs, we’ll work to see if it makes a change for the better.

Question 4. Where did your original inspiration come from for BTB Porter? Was it influenced by beers from your early years brewing in Montana? Any other brands in particular?

ANSWER 4:  As far as the inspiration, it was definitely from drinking porters that were available.  There was a period there where porters were my absolute favorite style, and the ones that I had tried were Black Butte, Ninkasi had a good one, Samual Smith’s, my favorite in Montana was probably Flathead Lake’s at the time.  When I’ve enjoyed something, it’s always how did they make this?  Can we make this?  What would we change that we think would make it even better.

Question 5. What other BTB beers do you focus on for entering in competitions? And why do you choose those particular brews?

ANSWER 5.  Usually we submit what we think are our best beers we have available at the time or that we know will fit a style well.  We’ve entered a little bit of everything in the GABF and World Beer Cup competitions to see how our beers stack up in a competition setting.  It’s a learning process, Porter did well in the competition for a few years by advancing through the rounds before it ever placed.  So we’ve had some luck with others, but only Skidder Brown has placed besides Porter.  We’re hoping that we keep improving and maybe get a medal in a couple more styles, but there is a lot of good beer out there so it’s not easy.  

Doing a lot of things right

If nothing else, this success in national competitions demonstrates that Kwasniewski and his brewers are doing a lot of things right. A whole lot of things. There’s a reason why Big Timber is West Virginia’s best selling craft beer brand.

If you’re a craft beer lover and haven’t had a glass of Big Timber Porter recently, get out to your favorite tavern or package store and grab one. On a cool evening this autumn, sit by the fireplace and savor its lovely malty, chocolatey flavor, with its perfect amount of balancing bitterness. Taste why it is West Virginia’s most awarded beer.