Friday saw this year’s Great American Beer Festival medals awarded. I have dug through all of the categories to present fun facts and kudos to breweries in California and in the other 49 states…
Let’s start this longer than my usual post off with the overall brewery winners in the order they were announced…
Short Fuse from Illinois, Cloudburst from Washington State, Sudwerk from California, Moontown Brewing in Indiana, Radiant Beer Co. from Anaheim, Metazoa Brewing from Indiana, Allagash from Maine and lastly Main and Sixth from Florida.
Now on to L.A. and adjacent medal winners. Highland Park Brewery won Silver for Fill Pils in the Kellerbier / Zwickelbier category. Figueroa Mountain had their name called four times for their Danish Red, Schwarz is the New Black, Meat Sweats and Davy Brown. Both Claremont Craft Ales and Arts District nabbed Bronze, the former in the Strong Red category and the latter in Special Berliner-Style.
The big winner was All Season Brewing who also secured Bronze through five rounds of judging in the second most entered category of American IPA. Third out of 404 entries is quite a feat.
Next up are my favorite beer names. Work Life Balance is great but the winner was Chris Barley in a Small Coat.
Other fun facts:
2,200 breweries participated so roughly a quarter of breweries overall.
Hazy IPA and American IPA both had over 400 entries but third was Fruited American Sour Ale and German Wheat Ale was fifth. Kolsch had 189 entries.
California swept the English / New Zealand category and had 60 medals overall.
Fresh Hop Ales were not judged because many are still in tanks. Those awards will be done next month.
The only category that didn’t award a prize was Scotch Ale, where no Gold was awarded.
GABF will return in 2022 from October 6-8.