Great American Beer Festival | 2013 Indiana Medal Winners

The 2013 Great American Beer Festival concluded this past weekend. And once again, Indiana breweries took home medals. More specifically, Sun King, Three Floyds, and RAM collectively won four medals for the Hoosier State:

Category: Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer
Winner: Gold Medal, Sun King for Afternoon Delight Barrel-Aged Dopplebock

Category: Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Stout
Winner: Gold Medal, Three Floyds for Blot Out The Sun Imperial Stout

Category: Field Beer or Pumpkin Beer
Winner: Silver Medal, RAM Restaurant and Brewery - Indianapolis for Anaheim IPA

Category: Imperial IPA
Winner: Silver Medal, Three Floyds for Permanent Funeral









We at Hoosier Beer Geek offer our congratulations to Sun King, Three Floyds, and RAM!

2012 GABF Indiana Winners

Winners were announced today at the 2012 Great American Beer Festival. Indiana brewers represented the state well, winning seven medals--

Category: 4 Fruit Wheat Beer
Gold - Ruby Raspberry Wheat, Mad Anthony Brewing Company, Fort Wayne

Category: 5 Field Beer or Pumpkin Beer
Silver - Anaheim IPA, RAM Restaurant and Brewery, Indianapolis

Category: 22 Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer
Silver - Pappy Van Muckle, Sun King Brewing Company, Indianapolis

Category: 50 American-Style Pale Ale
Bronze - Zombie Dust, Three Floyds Brewing Company, Munster

Category: 71 Belgian-Style Lambic or Sour Ale
Gold - Sour Reserve, Upland Brewing Company, Bloomington

Category: 72 Belgian-Style Abbey Ale
Silver - Sanitarium, Bier Brewery, Indianapolis

Category: 84 Barley Wine-Style Ale
Gold - Johan the Barleywine, Sun King Brewing Company, Indianapolis

Congratulations to the winners!

The full list of winners is here.

GABF Day 3 Falling Rock and Bus Tour

During the day on Saturday Rod and I decided that we would hit Falling Rock before we headed out on a bus tour to a few new spots in Denver. Falling Rock is a really fantastic bar that has become the meeting point and beer Mecca for people during the Great American Beer Fest. Falling Rock always has some pretty amazing beers during GABF. Vintage beers, rare beers, one offs, and brewery only type beers all make their appearance with new kegs being added as soon as one blows. It is busy pretty much the entire time and always extremely packed. I know that can be a huge turnoff for some people, but I still think it is a place that you need to stop by and have a beer when in Denver.

The Bar at Falling Rock 

We then jumped on a bus and headed to a brand new brewery in town. Denver has added many new breweries since last GABF. You could actually take tours that hit all of the new places that have opened up in town. I don't remember exactly how many new places have opened, but I think it stands at six new breweries since last year. We hit Strange Brewing Company first. Strange was opened up by two former newspaper workers that opened up a brewery when their paper they worked for went belly up. Strange is in an industrial strip mall next to an overpass. We were met by one of owners immediately and were given several samples while touring the tight but efficient brewery they have built. My personal favorite was the cherry bomb Belgian stout I had. It is just very cool to hang out with people that have such a great story and are extremely passionate about good beer. I certainly wish them well.

The Front Door 

The brew house 

Our final stop on the bus tour was at the new Highland Tap and Burger in the Lower Highlands area of Denver. This place had the look and feel of a well thought out neighboorhood bar. We didn't have much time there, but we were greeted by Dale from Oskar Blues and the head brewer of Odell Brewing company. We got to sample the newest batch of Odell bourbon barrel stout and it was really well made with a clear balance of barrel aging and malt profile. Odell also brought their Myrcenary DIPA that is a well made beer that features lots of tropical fruits int he hop profile. My last sample was the HGH that Oskar Blues brought. HGH stands for home grown hops. This is a big American strong ale made with hops that were grown on the farm at Oskar Blues. This beer had huge hop notes followed by a big malt body to go with it.

I looked over the menu and beer list, and I sure wish I had a place like this as my local.  Most of the craft beer was $4 or $5 per pint, the menu looked really good, and you can play bags on the porch.  It was my kind of place.

GABF Day 3 - Saturday sessions and awards

Saturday is the busiest day at the Great American Beer Festival.  Two full sessions are packed in to a single day, leaving the festival organizers and volunteers little time to recover.  Matt and I entered the festival a bit late.  We arrived at the convention center right as the festival doors were being opened and found ourselves on a 15 minute trek 3/4 way around the convention center to the back of the line.  Observing a rather impressive and efficient entry process at the other sessions, I pulled out my phone and started the stop watch.  Roughly 20 minutes later I had a glass in my hand and was off to sample more beer and await the judging results.  Moving a line that stretches across multiple city blocks in that short of a time is an amazing feat and the festival organizers should be commended.

The third day is notorious for being my day where I am approaching beer exhaustion.  Luckily, the award announcements help break up the day and allow me to ease myself back in to beer consumption.  We skipped around a bit and tried some highlights such as Odell's Woodcut No. 5, Maui's Imperial Coconut Porter and a few sours from Russian River.  We moved our way over to the awards to see what Indiana and our other favorite breweries would take home.

Indiana managed an impressive haul this year.  19% of the Indiana beers entered for judging received a medal.  That percentage is completely unheard of.  If the country wasn't already paying attention to Indiana as a great beer state, they are now.  Sun King pulled down the most medals of all the Indiana breweries with a whopping 8 medals - the most of any single brewery in the festival. 

Category 8: Coffee Beer
Gold: Sun King - Java Mac

Category 19: American-style Brett Ale
Bronze: Brugge Brasserie - Grimalkin / Super Kitty Fantastico

Category 20: Wood and Barrel-aged Beer
Silver: Sun King - Wee Pogue

Category 21: Wood and Barrel-aged Strong Beer
Silver: Sun King - BBJ (Bourbon Barrel Johan)

Category 27: American-style or International-style Pilsener
Silver: Sun King - Popcorn Pilsner

Category 35: German-style Marzen
Silver: Three Floyds - Munsterfest

Category 56: Scottish-style Ale
Silver: Rock Bottom College Park - Naughty Scot

Category 72: Belgian-style Strong Specialty Ale
Gold: Sun King - Buffalo Slumber

Category 75: Classic Irish-style Dry Stout
Gold: Sun King - Ring of Dingle

Category 81: Scotch Ale
Gold: Sun King - Wee Muckle

Category 83: Barley Wine-style Ale
Bronze: Sun King - Johan the Barleywine

Now if you're like us, at this point you're wondering why Sun King didn't also take home Small Brewery of the year since they had the most medals of any single brewery.  Once we found the Sun King guys and congratulated them on their success, Clay offered us an explanation of how the Small Brewery of the year judging works.  Each brewery gets to choose 8 of their beers to be considered for the Small Brewery of the year award and the winner is chosen based on the scores of those beers.  Unfortunately, the guys at Sun King picked the wrong beers, and their overall score wasn't enough to beat out Chuckanut.  However, Chuckanut is brewing some amazing authentic German-style beers, so they are definitely deserving of the award as well.

After the judging, Matt and I made a final pass of the floor before discussing our evening plans.  With the evening session following the afternoon session so quickly, we decided that we'd come back for the first hour of the evening session and perform our victory lap.  Between these two sessions some of our standout beers and breweries were:

• Rocky Mountain and their fruit flavored dessert beers
• Lost Abbey's Framboise de Amorosa
• Crabtree and pretty much everything we tried from them
• Kern River's Just Oustanding IPA (that's really the name)
• Ballast Point's Victory at Sea
• Grand Teton's Imperial Coffee Porter
• Firestone Walker's Fourteen
• Dogfish Head's Urkontinent
• Deschutes' The Abyss

We then headed over to the Yardhouse so that we could watch some football over dinner and I finished off this year's GABF trip with an Odell Myrcenary.  Well.... until I stopped in the Boulder Tap Room at the Denver Airport on my way out and had a wet-hopped Singletrack (entitled Freshtrack).

GABF is an incredible festival and there really isn't anything else like it.  I would certainly recommend a trip out to Denver for the festival if you've never been.  Just remember to buy your tickets early because they sold out in a week this year.  You'll also want to get in on hotels way in advance and make sure you're in line about an hour before the session starts.  Alternatively, you might consider just hitting the Saturday Afternoon and Thursday sessions and using the rest of your time to visit Falling Rock or any of the Denver area breweries.  No matter how you budget your time, you're sure to enjoy yourself.

GABF Day 2 - Friday night session

Last year the Great American Beer Festival started a Farm to Table program to demonstrate the benefits of pairing beer with locally sourced food. Chefs and brewers from around the country are paired together to come up with interesting pairing experiences. The Farm to Table event is an additional cost over the festival entry and is limited to 500 tickets. This year, the program has been expanded to two sessions (Thursday and Friday) and both sessions sold out. As an additional benefit, the beers available at the Farm to Table event are not available on the festival floor.

As with any pairing event, some things worked really well and some things completely missed their mark. Standouts included the combination of The Monks Kettle from San Francisco and Funkworks from Fort Collins. A sweetbread based "meatloaf" was excellent with the Funkworks Saison. Brooklyn Brewery paired their Black Chocolate Stout with a chocolate and custard dish from Chicago's The Signature Room for a decadent and delicious dessert pairing. Three Floyds paired their Gumballhead with a dish of poppyseed and lemon curd topped with cuddlefish noodles for what was my favorite pairing of all. Nice job guys, and my apologies for not remembering which restaurant put together that great dish.

On the festival floor, standouts included Darkside Fermentation from Texas, Trinity's Brain of the Turtle which is released on Sunday, Jester King from Texas, Duck Rabbit, Old Hickory, Real Ale, Metropolitan, Smuttynose and St. Arnold - among many others.

Here's another photo dump...

GABF Day 1 - Thursday night session

Session #1 GABF

It is a very overwhelming feeling walking to the Colorado Convention Center knowing you have 465 breweries and over 2400 beers to choose from.  I am more of the stoic thinker when it comes to where I am going to hit than the ravenous person grabbing samples at every single table.  I had my must hits for the night, but I was really caught off guard at how many places were already out of beer by around 8:30.  Many beers were simple gobbled up as quickly as thirsty beer drinkers could get to them.  The convention center is easily laid out based on geographic region and then the brewers are then split up alphabetically.  It is pretty easy to get around and find the brewery you are looking for. It was exciting to see a new Indiana brewery Figure 8 representing Indiana as well.  The lines are usually not that long except for the end cap breweries that have massive followings.  The lines for Cigar City, Shorts, The Bruery, Alaskan, DogFish Head, Russian River, Three Floyds, and New Belgium were all pretty long, but moved very quickly. The whole night though I don’t think anyone had as long of a line as Cigar City.  Here are my winners for the night:

Short’s – Another Caucasian Gary inspiration from The Big Lebowski and it tasted very much like a White Russian

Cigar City – Hunahpu and Good Gourd Imperial Pumpkin Beer

Destihl from Normal, Illinois and their Saint Dekkera Barrel reserve series.  The 3.5 year old raspberry framboise was amazing.  I can’t wait to make a trip over there and check them out.

Jackie O’s from Ohio and their Oil of Aphrodite and Kentucky Monk were outstanding

Iron Hill’s Roggenbier

Alaskan’s 2000 smoked porter

The Bruery’s Black Tuesday

Funkwerks Saison

Brugge Brasserie’s Super Kitty Fantastico

Just going off of memory, these were the standous for me....

Alaskan Smoked Porter - 2000 edition
The Bruery Black Tuesday - more for the rarity, it's good but way hot
Brugge Brasserie Diamond Kings of Heaven
Cigar City Hunahpu - tons of vanilla!
Destihl eveything sour - seriously, all of their sours are good!
Goose Island Brewpub's Alba Madonna - WHITE TRUFFLES!
Deschutes Black Butte XIII - this drinks super smooth
Elysian Dark O' The Moon - pumpkin stout from th pumpkin mastes

And here's a photo dump!