Bank Top And Big Trip Take Home Top Awards At The Indie Beer Awards 2025

The two top awards in cask and keg at the Indie Beer Awards North West have been awarded to Bank Top Brewery in Bolton and Big Trip Brewery in Manchester, in what was a hard-fought competition of the region’s best beers.

Bank Top brewery took home the Overall Champion Gold in cask for the second year running, this time with their strong brown ale ‘Hercules’ which impressed judges with nutty caramel notes and an aromatic, spicy hop aroma. Collecting the award on behalf of the team was Ben Sweeney from Bank Top;

“It’s been a phenomnenal year for us, we picked up national Gold from SIBA earlier this year so to have an even better performance at the North West Awards than last year honestly means the world to me and the team. We were in this same room last week picking up the Bolton business award for hopsitaltiy so to perform like this in the Indie Beer Awards today is abolsutely unbelievable.”

Big Trip were named the best in keg, taking home the Overall Champion Gold for their ‘WTAF’ New England style IPA, a big hazy IPA with flavours of pineapple, mango and peach from the combination modern American hops. Simon Chantler had this to say about Big Trip’s big win;

“Very, very, very pleased to win, just great to be recognised amongst all of these great brewers in the room today, and thankyou to SIBA for organising and all the hard work you guys have put in with these awards – absolutely fantastic.”

The Indie Beer Awards are run by and for independent brewers and are judged by fellow brewers from elsewhere in the UK, as well other representatives from the industry and expert beer judges – making these the much coveted ‘brewers’ choice’ awards in the North West.

Hosting the awards on behalf of SIBA was Andy Slee, SIBA Chief Executive, “Massive congratulations to all of this year’s winners and in particular Big Trip who beat the best of the best in the hard-fought keg competition, and Bank Top – who managed to take home the Overall Cask Gold for the second consecutive year. The Indie Beer Awards are meticulously organised and judged by experts, with the region’s very best beers fighting it out for medals.”