Wayfinder Beer Crowned the Krispy King

For the third year in a row, Barrels and Bottles Brewery in Golden, Colorado, hosted the Krispy King Lager Competition in advance of the Great American Beer Festival. This year — for the first time — they crowned a Krispy Queen. Read More

2024 GABF Guided Routes | Hoppy Beers to Try at GABF

The Great American Beer Festival is finally back! With the insane multitude of beers being served on the festival floor, it can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. So PorchDrinking is once again here to help you navigate that lineup and help with planning your route at the fest. As part of that research, we’ve sifted through every beer pouring at this year’s fest to curate a series of themed routes to help you plan for your GABF based on various styles and flavors.

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2024 GABF Guided Routes | Best Lagers to Try at GABF

The Great American Beer Festival is finally back! With the insane multitude of beers being served on the festival floor, it can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. So PorchDrinking is once again here to help you navigate that lineup and help with planning your route at the fest. As part of that research, we’ve sifted through every beer pouring at this year’s fest to curate a series of themed routes to help you plan for your GABF based on various styles and flavors.

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Seedstock Brewery | Marzen

Coming off a gold medal at the Great American Beer Fest (GABF), Seedstock Brewery’s Marzen epitomizes the clean yet robust character of this malty style. The win also feels particularly sweet for the McIlvenna family, which purchased the brewery just two years ago. Read More

Rough Draft: Challenges In On-Premise Craft Beer Sales

Amongst the revelry of craft beer fans that descended upon Denver in late September for the annual Great American Beer Festival, a smaller group of beer enthusiasts gathered at Cervantes Masterpiece in Five Points for the last Brewbound BrewTalks industry event of 2023. While GABF is mainly a consumer-facing event, there are a small number of industry insider, business-focused events that occur that same week and BrewTalks is one of them.

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Colorado Beer Beat | Bi-Weekly Beer Release Guide 9/28

Welcome to the Colorado Beer Beat, a bi-weekly roundup of all of the new can releases around the state. From Denver to Grand Junction and everywhere in between, we have you covered. Be sure to check back on Thursdays (usually!) to find out what’s new in the Colorado beer scene.

Well, GABF is officially over, but that doesn’t mean the celebration of craft beer is ending here in the State of Craft Beer! With 40 different individual medals coming home to Colorado breweries, there’s undoubtedly a winner that you’ll need to go find this weekend. Take a look down below as some of the newest releases in the Colorado beer scene, who knows one of them may be a medalist at GABF 2024.

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2023 GABF Guided Routes | Best Barrel-Aged & High ABV Beers to Try at GABF

The Great American Beer Festival is finally back! With the insane multitude of beers being served on the festival floor, it can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. So PorchDrinking is … Read More

The Complete PorchDrinking 2023 GABF Week Events Guide

The return of the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) each year serves as one of the greatest spectacles in American craft beer. And while the festival, which kicks off this week on Thursday, September 21, is a feat in and of itself, what happens outside of the Convention Center is equally as exciting. External beer events built around the return of GABF have already begun kicking off, and they offer beer fans a unique opportunity to explore rare and exciting new beers from breweries not typically available in the state of Colorado but also serve to showcase some of the best that the state of Colorado can offer. Read More

Colorado Beer Beat | Bi-Weekly Beer Release Guide 9/14

Welcome to the Colorado Beer Beat, a bi-weekly roundup of all of the new can releases around the state. From Denver to Grand Junction and everywhere in between, we have you covered. Be sure to check back on Thursdays (usually!) to find out what’s new in the Colorado beer scene.

Now that college football has returned, there are a lot of new Colorado fans all of a sudden… That can’t be everyone jumping on the Deion bandwagon, can it? Oh, it definitely can! But, while you’re here trying to find out more ways to make yourself seem like you’ve been a fan for years, take a look at what you’ve been missing out on in the Colorado beer industry.

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Colorado Beer Beat | Bi-Weekly Beer Release Guide 8/24

Welcome to the Colorado Beer Beat, a bi-weekly roundup of all of the new can releases around the state. From Denver to Grand Junction and everywhere in between, we have you covered. Be sure to check back on Thursdays (usually!) to find out what’s new in the Colorado beer scene.

We are officially less than a month away from the start of the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) 2023. Don your finest costume and pretzel necklace and join the fun at GABF September 21-23 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. Tickets are still available for each of the four sessions, but don’t wait or you’ll miss out on the premier beer festival of the year!

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2023 Denver Rare Beer Tasting Pour List

Do you find yourself craving some exciting and rare beer? Do you struggle to find those specialties on your local dusty liquor store shelves? Have no fear because the Denver Rare Beer Tasting is (almost) here! The festival has announced its pour list, and there are many treats to entice you to attend.

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Colorado Beer Beat | Bi-Weekly Beer Release Guide 12/1

Welcome to the Colorado Beer Beat, a bi-weekly roundup of all of the new can releases around the state. From Denver to Grand Junction and everywhere in between, we have you covered. Be sure to check back on Thursdays (usually!) to find out what’s new in the Colorado beer scene.

As expected, after a busy holiday weekend, the new releases are slightly more limited this week. What you can look forward to spotting down below are a few specialty releases that only come out this time of the year. From a candy cane stout from River North to a variety of Grow Old With You variants from Verboten, the holidays are in full swing in the Colorado craft beer community.

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Favorite Beer Names of GABF 2022

Sometimes, it is not the description of the beer that pulls you in, but the name of the beer. I have zero qualms about purchasing Hopewell Brewing Co.’s Ya Filthy Animal simply because of the name of the beer (turns out it is my favorite holiday beer, so that one paid off), and going into Great American Beer Festival, my philosophy remained the same.

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Colorado Beer Beat | Bi-Weekly Beer Release Guide 10/20

Welcome to the Colorado Beer Beat, a bi-weekly roundup of all of the new can releases around the state. From Denver to Grand Junction and everywhere in between, we have you covered. Be sure to check back on Thursdays (usually!) to find out what’s new in the Colorado beer scene.

Colorado seems to have flipped a switch in the past couple of weeks because it really is starting to feel like fall. Your favorite breweries have noticed too, so we’re seeing plenty of dark beers flowing this week. Bask in the deliciousness of all of the stouts and porters, and enjoy the extra warming embrace that they provide. Where are you stopping for a beer first this week?

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The Illinois Breweries That Produce GABF-Winning Hazy Beers (And That’s Not All They Do)

The Brewers Association introduced the Hazy/Juicy IPA category for the Great American Beer Fest awards in 2018, reflecting the style’s presence and impact within the brewing world — and the first gold medal went to Chicago’s Alarmist Brewing with its Le Jus. Eris Brewery & Cider won bronze in that same category for its Folken Haze. The next year, Old Irving followed with another gold for its ever-popular Beezer. Indeed, Chicago stood as king of the hazy-beer hill. All told, seven Illinois breweries have received a total of nine medals (four gold) in five years for the hazy/juicy Pale Ale, Strong Pale Ale, IPA and Imperial IPA categories. Here are the The Illinois Breweries that Produce GABF-winning Hazy Beers, and a little more about what they brew, serve, and offer.

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Ohio Breweries Find Repeat Success at GABF

Ohio craft breweries once again performed well on the national stage, bringing home eight medals from the 2022 Great American Beer Festival. Notably, every Ohio winner had previously been recognized at GABF or the World Beer Cup.

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The ROI of the Great American Beer Festival

The 40th anniversary of the Great American Beer Festival marks the first time the event has been held in person and open to the public since 2019. To say that brewers and craft beer fans are excited is an extreme understatement. While participation and attendance were limited this year due to renovations to the Colorado Convention Center, the exhibitor floor was still packed with over 200 suppliers and drew over 10,000 fans to the event.

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2022 GABF Results | What Breweries Won Big This Year?

The last two years have been… let’s say rough. One beacon of light that has emerged the last few months has been the re-emergence of beer festivals. However, due to its massive size, there were doubts that Great American Beer Festival would be able to come back swinging in 2022. Doubt no more, because the masses of craft beer nerds have descended upon Denver to bask in GABF’s glory once again.

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Illinois Breweries Who Won Big at 2022 GABF Competition

Illinois breweries, including nine within the Chicago metro area, came away with 10 medals at the Great American Beer Fest, with Double Clutch Brewing emulating what On Tour Brewing did in 2017: win two beer medals and the “Brewery of the Year” for a small brewery award (0-250 barrels). The only gold went to Maplewood Brewing for its Oatmeal Stout. The 10 beer medals is down from the robust 16 Illinois breweries won in 2021, but still a more than respectable showing.
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2022 Great American Beer Fest Day 1 Recap | Standouts and Hidden Gems

The bagpipers did more than kick-off the 40th annual Great American Beer Fest; they signaled the end of a two-year hiatus caused by the global pandemic. And with that re-start, the PorchDrinking team is back roaming the aisles and aisles of booths, sampling beer and taking notes. Without further ado, here is our team’s GABF Day 1 Recap – our favorites and hidden gems.

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