GABF Winners Announced

The winning breweries in the 2008 Great American Beer Festival have been announced. This year there were 2902 beers entered in 75 categories, with an average of 39 per category and over 100 in American IPA.

The big awards went to:

Anheuser-Busch, Inc.
Large Brewing Company and Large Brewing Company Brewer of the Year

Pyramid Breweries Inc.
Mid-Size Brewing Company and Mid-Size Brewing Company Brewer of the Year

AleSmith Brewing Co.
Small Brewing Company and Small Brewing Company Brewer of the Year

Rock Bottom Brewing
Large Brewpub and Large Brewpub Brewer of the Year

Redwood Brewing Co.
Small Brewpub and Small Brewpub Brewer of the Year

A good list as usual. Alesmith is singularly amazing of course, and Pyramid wins medals every year for its various wheat beers. No medals for the Magic Hat half of the company though...

It's interesting to note that Rock Bottom is a brewpub franchise, like Gordon Biersch and The Ram, and their different locations entered beers separately. So if you look at category 53: Irish Red Ales you'll see that Rock Bottom won all three medals, from three different brewpubs... The props went to 'The Rock Bottom Team'.

Also of note:

Former Titanic brewer and friend of the homebrew club Jaime Ray won a silver for his Montgomery Blonde. Congratulations!

The Aged Beer category looks like it was fun. The winners were '06 Alaskan Smoked Porter, Vintage Alesmith Speedway Stout, and '03 Sam Adams Utopias. Yum!

The Gold winner in the Pro-Am was brewed at Big Time in Seattle. Go Seattle homebrewers!

So I didn't make it to the GABF again. Maybe next year...