New England Brewing Co in Uralla takes out gold, silver and bronze at Independent Brewers Association awards

Out of humble beginnings nine years ago, owner Ben Rylands debuted selling beer just to the locals.

"We had a pretty basic brewery door, it was a bit rough around the edges," he said.

"The local pubs, bottle shops and restaurants still have our main focus; unless people drink our beer locally we aren't really a local brewery.

"The venues that have really supported us are the ones who have us on tap."

The brewery took out the gold title at the Independent Brewers Association beer awards for its popular New England Pale Ale.

Silver was dished out for Grandad Brown; an English style brown ale that's a little bit sweet with toffee, caramel and chocolate notes.

And, the bronze was handed to the Hop Cannon IPA, a classic American hop flavoured beer.

The brewery has slowly grown and now supplies pubs in Sydney, Newcastle, the North Coast and Brisbane.

When they started there wasn't much brewing experience, Mr Rylands said.

"The craft beer world was pretty different, it was a bit more cowboy where everyone was trying to make beer but not that many were making really good beer," he said.

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"The old saying is it's easy to make beer but it's hard to make good beer - that's what a lot of us were doing nine years ago.

"Now there are breweries in small towns, the suburbs of capital cities, but back then there was only two or three in regional NSW."

Mr Rylands commended his brewers from Tamworth Ben Blinman and Ryan McDonald and said while he does "the boring stuff" it's their work on crafting good, delicious beer that won the gold medal.

The awards were presented at the end of November.