The Champion Winter Beer Of Britain (also known as WiBOB) is an award presented by the Campaign for Real Ale

Campaign for Real Ale

The Campaign for Real Ale is an independent voluntary consumer organisation based in St Albans, England, whose main aims are promoting real ale, real cider and the traditional British pub...

 (CAMRA), at their annual National Winter Ales Festival

National Winter Ales Festival

The National Winter Ales Festival is a yearly event organised by the Campaign for Real Ale . The purpose of the event is to showcase the best winter ales in the UK...

 in January. The award is similar to the Champion Beer Of Britain

Champion Beer of Britain

The Champion Beer of Britain is an award presented by the Campaign for Real Ale , at their annual Great British Beer Festival in early August. Beers can qualify in three ways:...

 (or CBOB) which is presented in August. Until the winter of 1996 these were presented as part of the main Champion Beer Of Britain awards, but were moved to the National Winter Ales Festival from its creation in 1997. As for CBOB, beers can qualify in three ways:

• CAMRA tasting panels judge the beers in their geographic area of the UK. The recommendations of these panels are put forward to 6 regional panels, with the winners of these qualifying for the finals in August.
• Votes from CAMRA members via a form in What's Brewing, the CAMRA newsletter.
• Winning one of the 150 Beer Of The Festival awards from CAMRA beer festivals held throughout the year

Nominated beers are then grouped into categories and go through several rounds of blind tasting at the National Winter Ales Festival. Category winners are then re-judged to determine the supreme champion - the Champion Winter Beer Of Britain.

Categories

Beers are split into categories depending on their style or strength

Alcohol by volume

Alcohol by volume is a standard measure of how much alcohol is contained in an alcoholic beverage .The ABV standard is used worldwide....

.

• Old Ale
  Old ale
  Old ale is a term commonly applied to dark, malty beers in England, generally above 5% abv, also to dark ales of any strength in Australia. Sometimes associated with stock ale or, archaically, keeping ale, in which the beer is held at the brewery....
  
  s & Strong Mild
  Mild ale
  Mild ale is a low-gravity beer, or beer with a predominantly malty palate, that originated in Britain in the 17th century or earlier. Modern mild ales are mainly dark coloured with an abv of 3% to 3.6%, though there are lighter hued examples, as well as stronger examples reaching 6% abv and...
  
  s
• Barley Wine
  Barley wine
  Barley wine or Barleywine is a beer style of strong ale originating in England. The first beer to be marketed as Barley Wine was Bass No. 1 Ale, around 1870...
  
  s
• Porter
  Porter (beer)
  Porter is a dark-coloured style of beer. The history and development of stout and porter are intertwined. The name was first used in the 18th century from its popularity with the street and river porters of London. It is generally brewed with dark malts...
  
  s & Stout
  Stout
  Stout is a dark beer made using roasted malt or barley, hops, water and yeast. Stouts were traditionally the generic term for the strongest or stoutest porters, typically 7% or 8%, produced by a brewery....
  
  s

Current Holders

Gold, Silver and Bronze awards for 2011 are :

• Gold: Hop Back Brewery Entire Stout
• Silver: Marble Brewery Chocolate
• Bronze: Dow Bridge Brewery Praetorian Porter

Gold, Silver and Bronze awards for 2010 were :

• Gold: Elland 1872 Porter
• Silver: Breconshire's Ramblers Ruin
• Bronze: Acorn's Gorlovka Imperial Stout

Previous Holders

There were two National Winter Ales Festivals in 1997. The first one at the beginning of the year presented the 1996/7 awards and the other, at the end of the year, presented the 1997/8 awards. There was no festival in 1998, the next one being in January 1999.

Year	Gold	Silver	Bronze
1996/7	Hambleton Nightmare	Branscombe Vale Yo Ho Ho	Theakston Theakston Brewery T&R Theakston is a British regional brewery located in the town of Masham, North Yorkshire, England. They are the sixteenth largest brewer in the UK by market share, and the second largest brewer under family ownership after Shepherd Neame.-History:...  Old Peculier
1997/8	Nethergate Nethergate Nethergate is a computer-based historical-fiction fantasy role-playing game by Spiderweb Software available for the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms. The game was released in 1999 by Jeff Vogel, and was Spiderweb Software's first game to feature a 45° isometric viewing angle...  Old Growler	Shepherd Neame Shepherd Neame Shepherd Neame is an English regional brewery founded in 1698 by Richard Marsh in Faversham, Kent. It is a family owned brewery that produces a range of cask ales and filtered beers. Production is around 230,000 barrels a year...  Original Porter	Daleside Monkey Wrench
1999	Dent T'Owd Top	Woodforde's Norfolk Nog	Daleside Monkey Wrench
2000	Robinson's Robinson's Brewery Robinsons is a family run regional brewery founded in 1838 by William Robinson at the Unicorn Inn, Stockport, England. The company's brewery is called the Unicorn Brewery....  Old Tom	Theakston Old Peculier	Wye Valley Wye Valley Brewery Wye Valley Brewery is a brewery in the village of Stoke Lacy, Herefordshire, England, in the Wye Valley. Founded in 1985 by Peter Amor, it has become "one of Britain's leading independent breweries"...  Dorothy Goodbody's Wholesome Stout
2001	Orkney Orkney Brewery Sinclair Breweries Limited parent company for the Orkney and Atlas ales' Orkney Brewery was founded in March 1988 by Roger White at the old schoolhouse in Sandwick, Orkney, Scotland. Atlas was formed in 2002 by Neill Cotton and merged with Orkney in 2004 under the name Highland & Islands Breweries...  Skullsplitter	Sarah Hughes Sarah Hughes Sarah Elizabeth Hughes is an American figure skater. She is the 2002 Olympic gold medalist and 2001 World bronze medalist in ladies singles.-Personal life:...  Dark Ruby Mild	O'Hanlon's Port Stout
2002	Wye Valley Dorothy Goodbody's Wholesome Stout	Bath Ales Bath Ales Bath Ales is a brewery located in the town of Warmley, Bristol, north-west of Bath, England.-History:The brewery was established in 1995 by former employees of Smiles Brewery in Bristol. Since that time, it has experienced steady growth, which included opening a new bottling plant in...  Festivity	Robinson's Old Tom
2003	Nethergate Old Growler	Gale's Gales Brewery Established in 1847 Gales Brewery was an old brewery situated in Horndean, on the edge of Waterlooville, near Portsmouth in Hampshire, England. It made the nutty HSB and the newer Gales Bitter...  Festival Mild	Wentworth Oatmeal Stout
2004	Moor Old Freddy Walker	Gale's Festival Mild	Shepherd Neame Original Porter
2005	Robinson's Old Tom	Bath Ales Festivity	Woodforde's Headcracker
2006	Hogs Back Hogs Back Brewery Hogs Back Brewery is a brewery in Tongham, Surrey, England, and named after the nearby Hog's Back ridge. The brewery started in 1992 as a joint venture between two friends, Martin Zillwood-Hunt and Anthony Stanton-Precious...  A Over T	Gale's Festival Mild	Goff's Black Knight
2007	Green Jack Green jack The green jack, Caranx caballus , is an abundant species of coastal marine fish in the jack family Carangidae. The species is distributed in the eastern Pacific Ocean along the American coastline from Santa Cruz Island off California in the north to Peru in the south, as well as a number of islands...  Ripper	Fuller's London Porter	Orkney Skullsplitter
2008	Wickwar Wickwar Brewing Company The Wickwar Brewing Company is a brewery based in Wickwar, South Gloucestershire, England. It was founded by Ray Penny in 1990 as a microbrewery, using premises previously belonging to Arnold's Cooperage, cider brewers...  Station Porter	Robinson's Robinson's Brewery Robinsons is a family run regional brewery founded in 1838 by William Robinson at the Unicorn Inn, Stockport, England. The company's brewery is called the Unicorn Brewery....  Old Tom	Hop Back Entire Stout
2009	Oakham Oakham Ales Oakham Ales is a brewery now based in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England but first established in Oakham, Rutland. Its headquarters is the largest brewpub in Europe, The Brewery Tap.-Notes:2006... Attila	Elland 1872 Porter	Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild
2010	Elland 1872 Porter	Breconshire's Ramblers Ruin	Acorn's Gorlovka Imperial Stout
2011	Hop Back Entire Stout	Marble Chocolate	Dow Bridge Praetorian Porter