PorchDrinking’s Best in Beer 2019 | Mountain Region

It’s been an interesting year in beer to say the least. This year we set out to explore a wider array of breweries and beers and came back pretty surprised by what we discovered. And while it would be nearly impossible to break down the best beers from 2019, we looked back on some of our favorites from the past year as well as some of the most stand-out breweries, beer festivals and stories from 2019. Enough exposition, let’s get straight to the honors.

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Brickway Brewery & Distillery | Jalapeño Pineapple Pils GABF Gold

Being a fan of spicy food, I’ve tried to like chili beers. Some are too mild, some blast out my taste buds; I rarely finish a full pint before tapping out. But when I heard that the GABF Gold Medal Winner for Chili Beer was a quick drive away in Omaha, Nebraska, I knew I had to try it.

When you take your first sip of Brickway Brewery & Distillery’s Jalapeno Pineapple Pils, you will set down your glass and say, “Oh, I get it. That’s what a chili beer is supposed to taste like.”

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5 Questions With Brink Brewing’s Head Brewer, Kelly Montgomery

Winning something once is tough. Repeating that successful feat is an even tougher task. So, when Cincinnati-based Brink Brewing won GABF gold for “Very Small Brewing Company” for a second consecutive year, a lot of people took notice – myself included. As a young operation, volatility and uncertainty are commonplace. Making good beer, consistently, at a profit, is an arduous task that not many can master. Building a loyal drinking base and gaining accolades for your creations become even more difficult as you try to keep your core business afloat. This is what makes the work of Head Brewer Kelly Montgomery even more impressive. To find out more about the success of their small but stout operation, their reaction to GABF gold, and what comes next, we posed 5 questions to Brink Brewing’s Kelly Montgomery. 

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What We’re Drinking | October 11, 2019

It feels like just yesterday it was still summer and fall wasn’t even a thought. Here we are in the second week of October and summer is long gone. Now we’re right in the middle of football season, pumpkin space lattes and soon to be Halloween. Time flies when you’re having fun, and hopefully you’re drinking good beers along the way because we definitely are. Here’s What We’re Drinking. Read More

2019 Great American Beer Fest | Non-Alcoholic Beers Enter the Scene

Non-alcoholic beers were an emerging category of beer at the 2019 Great American Beer Festival with several breweries participating in both the festival and the competition. While they played a small part in the overall event, their addition to the competition this year may be a harbinger of things to come if this trends continue in the right direction.

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2019 Great American Beer Festival | Obscure & Historical Beer Styles

Pastry stouts, hazy IPAs and rare sours tend to command most of the buzz at the Great American Beer Festival; the lines at brewery booths pouring those beers last week in Denver certainly attested to that. However, I chose a different tasting route for my festival experience. As I wandered the festival floor, I didn’t so much choose “the road less traveled” as much as an overgrown path forgotten by time: I wanted to taste as many obscure, historical beer styles as I could.

GABF offers a wonderful educational opportunity for anyone who wants to taste styles largely lost to history. Want to know what a gruit tastes like? Want to compare multiple export stouts or Dortmunder lagers beside each other? You’ll never have a better chance to do it than at GABF.
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Best Beer Names from the 2019 Great American Beer Festival

Another Great American Beer Festival, another 4,000 beers in the books. Somehow breweries have yet to run out of beer puns for their beer names, so we searched high and low throughout the 2019 GABF to find the wittiest titles or otherwise amazing names. Though some were award winners and others were poured on the festival floor, all are hilarious.

Here are the best beer puns and names from GABF 2019.

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Colorado Breweries Shine Bright at 2019 GABF Awards Ceremony

This has been another great year for the home state of the Great American Beer Festival. Colorado breweries took home a whopping 40 medals and two brewery/brewer of the year awards at this year’s GABF. Of the 40 medals, 13 of them were gold medals, 21 silver and six bronze. Without further ado, let’s deep dive into this some of this year’s winners.

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Chicago takes hazy gold once again at GABF, 9 other medals

Chicago is once again home to Great American Beer Festival’s gold medal-winning Hazy IPA after Old Irving Brewing Co. took home top honors for Beezer. Last year, the first year with the Hazy IPA category, Alarmist won the inaugural gold for Le Jus. (And, in 2017, Hailstorm won for its Prairie Madness IPA which was the most-entered category by breweries that year.)

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2019 Great American Beer Fest | Standouts and Recap from Day One

As bagpipers marched into the Colorado Convention Center Thursday evening to officially usher in the 38th annual Great American Beer Festival the PorchDrinking team was feverishly sampling as many beers as possible, to discover hidden gems and standouts from night one.

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Ultimate 6er | ‘Lover’ Comes to Great American Beer Festival

The Great American Beer Fest is an awe-inspiring menagerie of beer. Good beer, weird beers, surprising styles, and not nearly enough time to give them all a thoughtful pause. It can be overwhelming to know where to start, so we over at PorchDrinking have several different routes that we have planned out to make it easier for those who love specific styles. There isn’t really a wrong way to do GABF (except not drinking water, please drink water) so here is a way to dive in that is more musically inclined.

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PorchDrinking’s 2019 Great American Beer Festival Survival Guide

The Great American Beer Festival began in 1982 with 24 breweries serving 47 beers to fans for a single, five-hour session. Today, the number of external events exceed the beers poured at that first fest, and the convention hall will allow patrons to select from more than 3,500 beers. What do you drink? Where do you go? How can one possibly navigate such a colossal beer experience? We at PorchDrinking.com have tried to make the process simpler, writing more than a dozen stories on the event. And, to further simplify it, we have now put all those stories in one location.

First a few important notes on this year’s festival:

• A few tickets still remain for Thursday Night and Saturday Night sessions. Tickets available here.
• This year’s festival format returns to booths being arranged alphabetically by region.
• Attendees of ALL sessions will receive glass cups instead of plastic.
• Thursday Night, Friday Night and Saturday Night Sessions begin at 5:30, Saturday’s Day Session begins at Noon. For first time attendees, we recommend arriving at least an hour and a half before your session to wait in line.
• Don’t forget to check out other sections for hidden gem beers. The Brewers Guild section has guild representatives from several states that bring beers from breweries that aren’t otherwise pouring on the festival floor.
• The Heavy Medal section has beers pouring from past GABF medal winners.
• There’s a Fresh Hop booth with all fresh/wet-hopped beers.
• Several breweries will have special timed releases that aren’t otherwise listed on the pour list. Modern Times Beer, for example, will have a different special release each day of the fest.

Enjoy GABF. Enjoy Beer. Enjoy Craft in all it glory. And here are more tools to help you enjoy the week.

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2019 GABF Guided Routes | Fruit-Forward Beers to Try at GABF

This was made possible by Molly’s Spirits, your go-to stop for some of the best local and national beer drops throughout GABF week and beyond!

For the past two months, … Read More

2019 GABF Guided Routes | Sour & Wild Beers to Try at GABF

This was made possible by Molly’s Spirits, your go-to stop for some of the best local and national beer drops throughout GABF week and beyond!

For the past two months, our staff has been researching styles for each beer pouring at the Great American Beer Festival. As part of that research, we’ve sifted through that list of beers to bring you a series of themed routes to help you plan for your GABF based on various styles and flavors.

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2019 GABF Guided Routes | Hoppy Beers to Try at GABF

This was made possible by Molly’s Spirits, your go-to stop for some of the best local and national beer drops throughout GABF week and beyond!

For the past two months, … Read More

2019 GABF Guided Routes | Lagers & Session Beers to Try at GABF

This was made possible by Molly’s Spirits, your go-to stop for some of the best local and national beer drops throughout GABF week and beyond!

For the past two months, … Read More

2019 GABF Guided Routes | Big Beers & Pastry Stouts to Try at GABF

This was made possible by Molly’s Spirits, your go-to stop for some of the best local and national beer drops throughout GABF week and beyond!

For the past two months, our staff has been researching styles for each beer pouring at the Great American Beer Festival. As part of that research, we’ve sifted through that list of beers to bring you a series of themed routes to help you plan for your GABF based on various styles and flavors.

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GABF Spotlight | The Best Pacific Northwest Beers

Going to the Great American Beer Festival, or GABF, is like going to another giant establishment with  four letters: IKEA. If you don’t have a plan, things are going to turn out ugly. You end up with a shopping cart/stomach full of things you didn’t need, and because of your inability to resist the siren’s call you’re going to cover your home with all sorts of terrible colors.

Here at PorchDrinking.com we’re playing the Jedi to your beer Padawan, guiding you through the overwhelming forest of malts to beer nirvana. Our experts have selected a few noteworthy beers from their region that you need to seek out. So make a list, stick to the plan and do not be distracted by the beautiful celebrities. Here are seven great beers to try, all hailing from the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

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Detailed Pour List | What’s Pouring at the 2019 Great American Beer Festival

This was made possible by Molly’s Spirits, your go-to stop for some of the best local and national beer drops throughout GABF week and beyond!

While the initial pour list for the 2019 Great American Beer Festival was first announced two months ago, we’ve gone through the list and updated each beer with detailed style descriptions (as best as available) to help you plan for your festival tasting experience.

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GABF Spotlight | The Best Chicagoland Beers

There will be more than 4,000 beers poured at this year’s Great American Beer Festival. It is impossible to try every beer there, it would even be a feat if you tried 3% of all the beers being poured at the event.

I went through the pour list of every Illinois brewery pouring at GABF this year and picked out a handful of beers that if you’re not from the state, should be on your list to try. Keep in mind that pour lists do change and so I’m going off of what is available on the festival’s website. I’ll also give you an honorable mention beer from each brewery that may not be the most hyped up beer they have, but it’s still worth trying.

Also, know that a lot of breweries submit beer for judging but don’t make the trip out to Denver to pour their beer. So if you saw that your favorite brewery sent beer to GABF, it doesn’t mean that they are actually going to be there for you to try. Read More