If a beer lover can make it to Denver, Colorado, the annual Great American Beer Festival tops the beer festival bucket list. For breweries across the country, it’s a chance to show their craft beer chops by racking up gold, silver or bronze medals from the country’s best beer judges. Recently, 72 California beers took the prize, including a number of notable and not-too-far-away Northern California breweries that felt the malted glory.
The festival invites brewers and industry professionals to judge beer in blind taste tests for each style and category over a three-day period. Awards acknowledge brewing excellence in each specified style. These medals are a badge of craft beer honor for brewers near and far. Thank Samuel Adams Brewing to for GABF’s anonymous judging panel, after the brewery famously won “Best Beer in America” in the consumer choice awards at the 1985 event, and then subsequently won America’s vote with sales reps providing free Samuel Adams merchandise and tickets to curry favor among beer fest tasters.
We always try to track down local brewers who have made it to the tops in certain categories, whether we can visit the brewery or find them in local bottle shops. Last year’s gold winner, Dustbowl’s (Turlock) Public Enemy Baltic Porter still ranks as one of our favorite winter finds (though sadly we didn’t see it on the 2018 awards list).
While Petaluma didn’t have any big winners, Northern California is the proud home to many festival winners, including Russian River Brewing (Santa Rosa) which took silver for its STS Pils lager. Most of these beers are seasonal, so look for these winners at the brewery or in the bottle in the coming months:
Gold medalists
Alaro Craft Brewery (Sacramento): Castillo IPA, English-style IPA
FiftyFifty Brewing (Truckee): Bananenhängematte, German-style Wheat ale
Alvarado Street Brewery & Grill (Monterey): Mai Tai P.A., international-style pale ale
Drake’s Brewing (San Leandro): Santa’s Brass, wood-and-barrel-aged strong beer
Silver medalists
Sudwerk Brewing (Davis): Märzen, American-style amber lager
New Helvetia Brewing (Sacramento): Mystery Airship 4.0 Temple Cascara Golden Ale, coffee beer
Hermitage Brewing (San Jose): Sour Cherry Sour, fruited wood-and-barrel-aged sour beer
Santa Clara Valley Brewing (San Jose): Alviso Mills Hefeweizen, German-style wheat ale
Moonraker Brewing (Auburn): Northern Lights, imperial India pale ale
Russian River Brewing (Santa Rosa): STS Pils, kellerbier
State Room Brewery (San Rafael): Awesome Beer Rice Lager, light lager
Original Pattern Brewing (Oakland): Call of the Void, other Belgian-style ale
Three Mile Brewing (Davis): Little Downtown Tom, session India pale ale
Bronze medalists
21st Amendment Brewery (San Leandro): El Sully, American-style cream ale
Peter B’s Brewpub (Monterey): Tropic Maelstrom, American-style fruit beer
Morgan Territory Brewing (Tracy): Shut Up & Adore Me, export stout
Corralitos Brewing (Watsonville): Zone AG Golden Raspberry, fruit wood-or-barrel-aged sour beer
Crooked Lane Brewing (Auburn): Veedels Bräu, German-style kolsch
Faction Brewing (Alameda): The Penske File, International-style pale ale
Alvarado Street Brewery (Salinas): Contains No Juice, juicy or hazy imperial or double IPA
Standard Deviant Brewing (San Francisco): Hefeweizen, South German-style hefeweizen
FiftyFifty Brewing (Truckee): I Did It All for the Cookie, specialty beer
FiftyFifty Brewing (Truckee): Eclipse, wood-and-barrel-aged strong stout
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