A CUMBRIAN brewery is flying the flag for the county after its ‘thoroughly modern’ beer scooped a prestigious CAMRA award.

Hawkshead Brewery won silver in the Champion Beer of Britain 2014 competition at the CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) Great British Beer Festival at London’s Olympia.

The silver medal win for their Cumbrian Five Hop in the Golden Ales category marked the Staveley-based brewery’s third big award this year.

“It’s a thoroughly modern beer, very popular with young people and it’s great to feel appreciated,” said Alex Brodie, Hawkshead Brewery owner.

“It grew out of the hugely popular Windermere Pale and we developed the hopping for a stronger beer, and since then it’s flown.”

MORE TOP STORIES: The reigning Champion Beer of the North West and NW Champion Golden Ale, Cumbrian Five Hop contains a blend of three English and two American hop varieties.

It was first brewed as a ‘one off’ for Wetherspoons in 2011 for the chain’s spring beer festival but was so popular the brewery decided to keep it on themselves.

Tasting notes describe the beer as having ‘flavours of tropical fruit, orange marmalade and herbal hop aromas, balanced by a juicy malt character’.

Or as one fan tweeted: “A beautiful dance of hops on a malt stage.”

The annual CAMRA competition is the biggest beer competition in Britain and involves several months of judging by blind tasters throughout the country.

Hawkshead Brewery is sending the award-winning beer along with its Cumbrian-made New Zealand Pale Ale (NZPA) to the Antipodes for the locals to taste – draught beers travelling by plane and the bottles by sea.

They are headed for the 21st birthday celebration of renowned Wellington bar, The Malthouse, as part of the annual New Zealand beer festival, Beervana.

Resident New Zealander and head brewer Matt Clarke said: “If NZPA arrives on the other side of the world in anything less than a perfect state, I’ll not live it down!”