Two Suffolk businesses have been nominated for a prestigious award, after their products scooped three stars from the Great Taste Awards.

The Krafty Braumeister in Leiston and Stokes Sauces in Rendlesham were both nominated for the Golden Fork Award, and are in with a chance of being named 'supreme champion' of the Great Taste Awards 2021.

The nominated products were the Schwarz & Weiss beer for the Braumeister, and Blackcurrant Jam for Stokes.

These products are among just 33 of the 218 three-star winning items that were nominated for a Golden Fork.

%image(15117531, type="article-full", alt="Suffolk Brewer Uli Schiefelbein working in his Leiston brewery")

Uli Schiefelbein, the Krafty Braumeister himself, said: "I'm really happy to be nominated, I never dreamt that it would happen only three-and-a-half years after we started.

"It shows we are able to make really really good beer. It's the most wonderful news."

Mr Schiefelbein added: "I make purely German style beers — I'm German and I want things to be authentic. My English colleagues all do a much better job with ale.

%image(15117532, type="article-full", alt="Uli uses traditional methods to make beer "as it was 100 years ago"")

"The Schwarz & Weiss is a dark wheat beer, made to a special recipe based on a traditional version.

"We only use wheat, malt barley, and oak smoked malt. It's already won silver at a London beer competition, so it must be special — I think it is.

"It has no added sugar, no finings so it's suitable for vegans. It's a very natural product — beer as it was 100 years ago."

%image(15117533, type="article-full", alt="Stokes managing director Rick with their three-star winning jam")

A spokeswoman for Stokes said: "We aren't just a ketchup company — we've been making sauces since 2004, starting with our ketchup and expanding our range from there.

"We now do almost everything, from mayonnaise and coronation sauce to red onion marmalade, and yes, even jam.

"We've been making jam for at least ten years, and one of the key things about our blackcurrant is that it is what's known as an extra jam.

"This means it's at least 50% fruit. The texture is really special, it's a nice happy medium between a soft jam and a hard jelly.

%image(15117534, type="article-full", alt="Stokes Sauces, from Rendlesham, has been nominated for their blackcurrant jam, here served on a cheesecake")

"Some of our other products have got one or two stars with the Great Taste awards before, but this is the first to get three. It's very exciting."

The Great Taste Awards will reveal the winner on Sunday October 17.

The full list of Great Taste Award winners can be found here.