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

First-Timers & Familiar Names Pace Ohio’s Record-Setting Day at GABF

Ohio craft breweries earned 19 medals and one Brewery of the Year award at the 2023 Great American Beer Festival, a new record for the state. The list of Ohio GABF winners included stalwarts like Fat Head’s, Hoppin’ Frog and Brink, as well as newcomers like Narrow Path, Eudora and Seventh Son.

Read More

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.

Read More

2022 Great American Beer Festival Pour List Released + Initial Can’t Misses

The wait is nearly over as the Great American Beer Festival returns in less than a month. Returning October 6-8, the country’s largest beer event will celebrate its 40th anniversary after a two-year hiatus. And while this year’s festival footprint is noticeably smaller due to renovations to the Colorado Convention Center, upon first glance the breweries and beers that are anticipated to be poured look like a true return to glory.

Read More

Lone Pine Brewing Company | Chaos Emeralds

Lone Pine Brewing Company is a not-to-be-missed brewery that quickly grew from a small hole in the wall spot to a major player in the New England craft beer scene. Lone Pine opened in Portland, ME’s East Bayside neighborhood in 2016; by 2019, they grew enough to warrant a major expansion in Gorham, ME. Lone Pine is known for its vibrant hop-forward American ales and, over the course of two years, Lone Pine has worked to create what they call the “quintessential NEIPA with boutique hops.” The offspring of that labor of love is their award-winning Chaos Emeralds Double IPA featuring Galaxy and Mosaic hops.
Read More

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.

Read More

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.)

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

The Complete 2019 GABF Week Events Guide

For one week a year, Denver and the surrounding metro area turn upside down for the Great American Beer Festival. While the festival floor is a great place to sample thousands of beers from all across, the events happening outside of the festival have become equally as impressive and formidable. From tap take-overs to beer dinners, special release to actual full-blown separate beer festivals all together have broken off of GABF. So, to help provide some perspective and frothy guidance, we have made that navigation a bit easier with a 2019 GABF Week Events Guide. Too much to sort through and choose? Don’t worry, chuggernaut, we got you covered.

Read More

One of Denver’s Best Beer Fests Announces New Format & Brewery List

As we’ve articulated a few times, GABF week’s multitude of events have lately grown to the point of overshadowing the event itself. And while many of these periphery activities offer a host of rare or limited distribution beers, Pints for Prostates’ Denver Rare Beer Tasting offers one of the most impressive lineups collectively in one place, that you’ll find all weekend.

One of the many reasons the Rare Beer Tasting has been able to attract stellar beer lineups and brewery celebrities like Garret Oliver and Sam Calagione, is that Pints for Prostates has made such a relevant impact.

Read More

The PorchCast | Ep 54 Recapping GABF Week

The PorchCast team of Tristan, Sami, and Sam (minus Hunter) gathered last week to lend their final thoughts on the 2018 Great American Beer Festival. Hear our take on how the event went overall, some of our favorite beers and breweries to emerge from the festival, some of the crazy interactions that took place with other media members during the week, and some of the best external events that happened around GABF.

Read More

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Our Favorite Puns and Beer Names From GABF 2018

With more than 4000 beers being poured at GABF last weekend from approximately 800 breweries, you probably didn’t get a chance to try them all. Even if you liked beer as much as a certain Supreme Court Justice nominee, you still probably wouldn’t have been able to try every beer on site. Regardless, we did do some extensive investigating of the beers at GABF and compiled a list of our favorite beer names.

Read More

Recapping 2018 GABF’s Best Beers and Emerging Breweries

America’s largest beer festival has come to a close once again. After a week fueled by obscene amounts of beer, even greater volumes of caffeine, and the occasional Illegal Pete’s burrito, we’ve emerged once again from the clutches of the Great American Beer Festival, with an entirely new perspective on the newest crop of talent in craft beer.

Read More