2024 Great American Beer Fest Night One Recap | Standouts & Hidden Gems

What a difference a year can make.

By 9 p.m. of last year’s Thursday night opening session, I had navigated most of the festival floor and left feeling underwhelmed, confused, and a bit dejected. After covering the biggest and best beer festival in the country for 11 years, the 2023 Great American Beer Festival, to put it politely, felt a bit stale.

Save for the ceremonial bagpipe procession that has become a yearly tradition, the fest itself had become mostly devoid of the pomp and circumstance that has historically cemented GABF above a now bloated beer festival landscape. Most notably missing was over-the-top brewery booth designs, (Colorado-local, WeldWerks Brewing, and end-cap Stem Ciders were the only booths that really invested in any flare), only a handful of breweries helped to stoke the hype with specialty timed releases, and even more alarming was the disappearance of several recurring festival staples including the likes of Fremont, Beachwood Brewery, Jester King, New Glarus, Bells Brewery, Brooklyn Brewery, Cigar City, and even industry pioneer, New Belgium.

However, where 2023 felt like the onset of a potential decline for craft beer’s centerpiece event, the 2024 Great American Beer Festival took some risky and polarizing swings that paid off in a major way. GABF is back. And while the new changes aren’t going to be for everyone, they’re a necessary breath of fresh air, which will help ensure the long-term relevance of a 42-year-old festival.

Themed Areas

The most notable and noticeable change to this year’s event was the organization of breweries into “themed areas”. Consisting of “Fright” a Halloween-themed section, “Blast-Off” a space-themed section that includes “otherworldly experiences” such as their international section, “Score!”, a sports-themed area, “Meet & Mingle”, a reinvented Meet the Brewer experience, “Chill”, a backyard gathering with music, lawn games, and exclusive brews, and “Prost”, an Oktoberfest-inspired Biergarten area the GABF footprint embraced a more experiential approach as opposed to its historical layout by geographic region (or the one-year alphabetical experiment). All of the themed areas were well-executed with the exception being that both Blast-Off and Fright were a little too dark.

While some industry traditionalists may turn their nose to this dramatic shift in floorplan layout, it’s important to keep in mind that GABF in and of itself primarily caters to a beer-adjacent audience. Sure you’ll have a handful of die-hards who hunt for specific hype beers, or geek out at the opportunity to drink beer directly from the likes of Garrett Oliver, Kim Jordan, and Sam Calagione, but if you take a quick, honest survey of attendees you’ll likely notice that the true majority of the attendees consist of people who still generally like beer, but are mostly there for the party.

This move toward embracing experiential-focused areas has helped encourage more brewers to invest in creating a memorable booth design, while simultaneously inviting attendees to experience GABF in an entirely different way.

Additionally, without any clear geographic layout, GABF reverts back to its core mission of encouraging folks to discover new breweries.

Ciders / Seltzers / RTD’s / Non-Alcohlic

The other significant change to this year’s festival was the larger presence of “beyond beer” beverages including ciders, seltzers, ready-to-drink cocktails, and non-alcoholic options. As taste preferences evolve, so must its producers in order to remain relevant so once again the Brewers Association made the right call in expanding its category offerings in order to attract a wider base of festival attendees. Once again the only ones clinging to the idea that GABF should only serve independent craft beer are the folks who don’t have the worry about ticket sales. For years now, GABF has grown to become more than just the beer. Attendees are there for the party, for the experiences, for the chance to try and experience new things, and for far too long has the festival excluded those who either can’t drink beer or prefer other options but still wish to party with their friends.

Night One Best Finds & Recommendations

Ok enough of the soap box, let’s get down to what folks truly want to know… who were the major standouts? Firstly a big shout out to the breweries who not only participated in this year’s festival but went above and beyond to make GABF fun again. Big names like Firestone Walker, Sierra Nevada, WeldWerks, Cerveceria Colorado, and Howdy Beer brought back the big booth installations and showcased creativity with their booth designs and activations. In fact, Cerveceria Colorado rolled out a full wrestling ring just outside of the “Score” section for hourly wrestling matches and Howdy Beer once again brought back mechanical bull-riding.

After several years of creating culinary-inspired over-the-top beers, it’s become a requisite to visit the WeldWerks Brewing booth at the beginning of the festival to find out what crazy concoction the brew team has dreamt up for GABF and this year once again didn’t disappoint. After previous iterations which included a Spaghetti Gose, Taco Gose, and Cream Cheese Rangoon Gose, this year the Greeley-based brewery debuted a Soy Sauce Barrel-Aged Sushi Gose. And while the flavor profile doesn’t feel like it should make any sense, the brew team managed to perfectly capture the umami flavors of seaweed and soy sauce, a subtle distinct note of pickled ginger, and a softness associated with rice. Once again this shouldn’t work, but it absolutely does and is 100% worth trying paired with a fried rice ball with furikake seasoning and an aioli made with the beer.

Other hidden gems to add to your agenda for the rest of the weekend include stopping into the international section, located within the “Blast Off” area to explore some imported beers, including Outer Range, which sported cans of Hazy IPAs brewed at their French Alps location. Also be sure to keep an eye out for a scaled down State Guild row which includes beers from breweries not pouring on the general festival floor. Yesterday at the New York Guild, they poured The Fillings Are Mutual, a Mortalis x Other Half collaboration Smoothie Sour that tasted like a grape jelly and granola parfait dessert.

Best Beers / Longest Lines / Beers That Might Kick Early

While bigger names like Three Floyds, Revolution, and WeldWerks will attract the most hype, the absolute can’t-miss murderer’s row of breweries you should be spending the most time exploring is located in the Prost section. Beginning at booth C-57 and stretching the full length of the row, heavy hitters like Our Mutual Friend Brewery, Phantom Farms (more on this below), Pinthouse, Pure Project, and Radiant can all be found right next to each other, and Pure Project’s Corylus still remains as one of the best barrel-aged stouts that can be found at the fest.

Three Floyds
Revolution
Toppling Goliath
WeldWerks
Samuel Adams for their timed Utopias release (swing by the booth to find out the time listed)

Hidden Gems

One of the best overall showings of the evening came from Original Pattern Brewing. The Oakland, CA-based brewery is pouring one of the best Pilsners (Country Doctor), available on the festival floor, which was also joined by a phenomenal fresh hop IPA in Strata Squish.

Trap Door Brewing out of Washougal, WA was also impressive showcasing an incredibly diverse lineup which included Fresher than Fresh, a brilliant Fresh Hop West Coast IPA, Interiority 2023, a Barrel-Aged Stout aged 15 months in Westward Whiskey barrels and finished on cacao nibs and vanilla beans from Ecuado, Indonesia, Uganda and Madagascar, as well as one of the best fruited sour/wild beers at the fest. Untitled #8 is a collaboration between Trap Door and (coincidentally, their GABF booth neighbors) True Anomaly from Houston, TX) which is a Saison aged in neutral oak barrels with 4 separate brett strains refermented on 700 pounds of Rich Lady peaches and their stones from Baird Family Orchards, with the addition of Pinot Noir grape pomace then bottled with the addition of local honey.

Phantom Farms out of Cumberland, RI was an absolute revelation. While their flashiest beer was a Saison featuring Patagonian Pepper, it was one of the most technically sound breweries we discovered at the fest. Led by husband and wife team brewers, Oscar Garrido and Andrea Riera from Chile, the Phantom Farms brewing program has already garnered the attention and endorsement legendary brewer, Peter Bouckaert.

Continuing on the New Belgium alumni family tree, we also came across former New Belgium staple, Eric Salazar who is now brewing for Strangebird Beer, out of Rochester, NY. The iconic brewer who was instrumental in growing several sour projects while at New Belgium, including Eric’s Ale, flexed his muscles with Rode Vogel, a Flander’s-style Red.

- Pax Verum Ruins of Mutiny – West Coast IPA
- Phantom Farms – Sacred Tree Specialty Saison with Patagonian Pepper
- Trap Door Brewing – Untitled #8
- Strangebird Beer – Rode Vogel
- Seapine Brewing – Rainbow Suspenders Hazy IPA
- Round Trip Brewing – Instant Krüsch Extra Pale Kölsch
- PIVO Brewery – Old Balltown BBBASCDCBMS