GABF Winners Announced

The Great American Brewers Festival announced winners of 237 medals yesterday. As usual, host state Colorado won the most (45). California, the most-breweried state, finished second with 39. [Correction: California, by dint of its huge brewery advantage, has edged Colorado the last ten years.] Oregon came in third with 22. Washington (13) and Pennsylvania (12) rounded out the top five.

There were a mind-boggling 3300 entries this year. In the next few days, I'll repeat last year's exercise of doing a tally of how states did relative to the number of breweries participated. For now, here are Oregon's winners:

Brewery	Beer		Medals	Category
10 Barrel	S1NIST0R Black Ale		Bronze	Out of Category
Barley Brown's	Shredders Wheat		Silver	AmericanWheat Beer
Barley Brown's	Tumble Off Pale Ale		Bronze	American Pale Ale
Bend Brewing	Outback X		Silver	Old/Strong Ale
Cascade Brewery	Bourbonic Plague		Gold	Barrel-Aged Sour Beer
Cascade Brewery	Vlad the Imp Aler		Silver	Barrel-Aged Sour Beer
Deschutes Brewery	Mirror Pond Pale Ale		Silver	English Style Pale Ale
Deschutes Brewery	Black Butte Porter		Bronze	Brown Porter
Deschutes Brewery	Deschutes Brewery Quad		Bronze	Abbey Ale
Full Sail	Session Black		Gold	American-Style Dark Lager
Hopworks	Organic Ace of Spades		Gold	Imperial IPA
Hopworks	Organic Rise Up Red		Gold	American Amber
Laurelwood .	Space Stout		Gold	Foreign Style Stout
Laurelwood	Organic Deranger Imperial Red		Bronze	Imperial Red Ale
Oakshire	Overcast Espresso Stout		Silver	Coffee Flavored Beer
Pelican	Kiwanda Cream Ale		Silver	Golden Ale
Pelican	Surfer's Summer Ale		Silver	English Summer Ale
Pelican	MacPelican's Wee Heavy Ale		Bronze	Scotch Ale
Rogue Ales	Imperial Chocolate Stout		Silver	Herb/Spice/Chocolate Beer
Rogue Ales	Mocha Porter		Silver	Robust Porter
Widmer	W '10		Gold	Out of Category
Widmer	Hefeweizen		Silver	American Wheat Beer

The whole list of winners is here.


Update. Widmer and 10 Barrel both won medals in a category labeled, mysteriously, "Out of Category - Traditionally Brewed Beer." If you share my interest in that style, I'll reproduce the guideline here. Full descriptions of every style can be found here.

"There are many excellent and popular ales and lagers that are brewed with mostly traditional ingredients and processes, yet their character may vary from styles currently defined or included in these competition guidelines. For example a brewer may formulate a dark stout but may use lager yeast rather than ale yeast, and/or may dry hop with hops more typically used for German-style pilsener. Or perhaps a beer falls out of the color, alcohol or bitterness range of defined styles. This category recognizes undefined beers. They may be light or dark, strong or weak, hoppy or not hoppy. For purposes of this competition, judges recognize that these beers may or may not be highly experimental, but rather may differ subtly from other established guidelines. To allow for accurate judging the brewer must identify the classic or traditional style being elaborated on by name or category number, and the ingredient(s) and/or process(es) by which the entry differs from the classic style. Beer entries not accompanied by this information will be at a disadvantage during judging."

Update #2. A number of breweries won multiple medals, but those that won three or more medal and multiple golds were few. The beeg winners: Chuckanut (WA), 4 medals/2 gold; Flying Dog (MD), 4 medals/3 gold; and Pizza Port (Carlsbad, CA), 7 medals/4 gold. That Pizza Port total is eye-popping, but there's more. Pizza Port has San Clemente and Solana Beach locations, and they both won a gold apiece. Total Pizza Port take: 9 medals, six of the gold. That's a hell of a year.

In the "failed to meet expectation" camp, I would include Sierra Nevada and Boston Beer, who both won just a single medal each. SN took gold for their Kolsch and Boston Beer a silver for their doppelbock.


Update #3. MacTarnahan's took gold in the English Pale category. As strange as that is, this is even stranger (but in a different way): the flagship brew of erstwhile Portland Brewing was listed under Pyramid's tally, as a Washington brewery. Get used to this kind of cognitive dissonance: as consolidation continues in the craft world, we're going to see a lot of strange stuff like this. In this case, a beer brewed in a state and sold there is credited as a win for another state by virtue of being owned by a larger, out-of-state brewery. At least they let Widmer stand as its own brewery, and credited it as an Oregon concern.