One of the best things about attending GABF is the ability to try a ton of rare, completely off the wall or just hard to get beers. As such we’ve got some solid takeaways. If you happen to cross paths with these beers, you should probably jump at the chance to give them a taste.

These beers make up our list of the best of the best from GABF:

• Deschutes’ Black Butte XXIV
• Jester King Boxer’s Revenge Barrel Aged Wild Ale
• Alpine’s Firings Quad
• Sun King’s Pappy Van Muckle
• Three Floyd’s Arctic Panzer Wolf
• La Cumbre’s Elevated IPA
• Yazoo’s Fortuitous
• Founder’s KBS
• Beachwood BBQ’s System of a Stout
• Brooklyn Brewery’s Black Ops
• Goose Island’s Bourbon County Brand Stout
• Destihl’s Saint Dekkera Reserve Sour Hawaii Ale
• Coronado Brewing’s Barrel Aged Barley Wine Ale
• New Glarus’ Enigma
• Surly’s Smoke
• Crooked Stave’s Sentience
• Cigar City’s Good Gourd
• Stone’s Enjoy By
• Trinity’s Oh! Face
• Fifty Fifty’s Eclipse Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout
• Elevation’s Signal De Botrange
• River North’s Unified Theory

Some unique beers we discovered:

• Rogness Brewing Company: Yogi, a chai spice amber that definitely brought out that chai flavor.
• Wynkoop Brewing Company’s Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout: This beer might have had the most buzz about it going into the fest for the sole reason that it was brewed with bull testicles. Yes you read that right … balls. I’ll spare you the puns and just say it was pretty decent.
• Marley’s Peanut Butter Stout: Pretty Peanut Buttery, where’s my jelly?
• Zwanzigz’s The Ticket Chocolate Beer: Straight up tasted like Cocoa Puffs.
• DogFish Head’s Choc Lobster: Yeah its a stout based beer cooked with 40 live lobsters … no joke. This is starting to get out of control.
• DogFish Head’s Hot Thoup: this might have been one I was more excited about as it’s an imperial pale ale base which uses carrot juice and pureed ginger … and the beer is served warm, like soup!
• Renegade’s Black Gold: They used actual Peanut Butter Cups, oh hell yes.

Send us some feedback! What were your favorites?