On Saturday, the Brewers Association announced the winners of the 2023 Great American Beer Festival (GABF). The annual festival is the United State’s largest professional beer competition, with over 9,000 brews submitted for consideration from over 2,000 brewers from all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. This year’s conference, held in Denver from September 21-23, was the culmination of a nine-day tasting period in which beers spanning 99 categories and175 beer styles were sampled by a panel of 250 judges from 10 countries.
This year, judges awarded a total of 303 medals to 263 breweries. Sharonville, Ohio’s Third Eye Brewing Co. walked away with the biggest haul, taking home two gold medals in the Herb and Spice Beer and Chocolate Beer categories and two silver medals in the Pumpkin Beer category and GABF Collaboration Competition.
“The Great American Beer Festival competition serves as a platform for the finest beers from across the nation to undergo rigorous scrutiny and vie for the title of ‘Best in Class,’” says festival competition director Chris Williams in the release. “The beer community’s unwavering commitment to pushing the frontiers of innovation and quality is truly commendable.”
This year’s most-entered categories were unsurprisingly both iterations of the India Pale Ale: Juicy or Hazy with 365 entries and West Coast-style not far behind with 301 entries. This marks an interesting change from last year’s top category, the American-style IPA, which received just 206 entries this year compared to 2022’s 423 entries, bumping the category down to
