28 breweries from the state of Washington entered beers for last week’s 30th Annual Great American Beer Festival (GABF), and several returned home with new hardware to show off. 7 breweries brought home a total of 11 medals, including 5 gold medals. The biggest local winner was Chuckanut Brewing, located in Bellingham, WA, which won four medals and earned themselves the prestigious title of Small Brewing Company and Small Brewing Company Brewer of the Year award. This is the second time this young brewery has won such an award* in just three years of entering at GABF.
Other winners from Washington included Fish Brewing, which took home two medals in the same category, American Brewing Company, which was competing at GABF for the first time, Silver City Brewery, Big Time Brewery, Ram Restaurant and Brewery (Seattle) and Gordon Biersch Brewery (Seattle).
Congrats to all of the winners from Washington, and cheers to all of the other participating breweries. A lot of great beers and brewers always get left out in the cold for the competition, and this year was no exception.
Below is a list of winners from Washington, and you can find a full list of winners here:
Gold Medal
Category 2: American Style Wheat Beer with Yeast
Leavenworth Boulder Bend Dunkelweizen, Fish Brewing Co., Olympia
Category 30: Munich-Style Helles
Chuckanut Helles, Chuckanut Brewery, Bellingham
Category 43: Golden or Blonde Ale
Blonde, Ram Restaurant & Brewery (Seattle)
Category 44: German-Style Kolsch
Chuckanut Kolsch, Chuckanut Brewery, Bellingham
Category 46: Classic English-Style Pale Ale
Clear Creek Pale Ale, Silver City Brewery, Bremerton
Silver Medal
Category 37: European-Style Dunkel
Chuckanut Dunkel, Chuckanut Brewery, Bellingham
Bronze Medal
Category 2: American Style Wheat Beer with Yeast
Leavenworth Whistling Pig Hefeweizen, Fish Brewing Co., Olympia
Category 39: German-Style Schwarzbier
Gordon Biersch Schwarzbier, Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant (Seattle, but shows their corporate HQ of TN on their winners list)
Category 46: Classic English-Style Pale Ale
Prime Time Pale Ale, Big Time Brewery, Seattle
Category 61: American-Style Brown Ale
Brave American, American Brewing Co., Edmonds
Category 63: German-Style Altbier
Chuckanut Alt, Chuckanut Brewery, Bellingham
*In 2009, Chuckanut won the Small Brewpub of the Year. They now qualify for the Small Brewing Company award because a large percentage of their sales comes from distribution outside of the brewery.
Congratulations to the winners!
The bad thing about this reporting is that is doesn’t say where the Annual Great American Beer Festival was held. Was it in Seattle? Just poor reporting…
Denver. I should have included it here, but maybe my brain was just tired of including it in the ten or so posts I did about GABF in the past two weeks.