Every year a lucky few homebrewers get to brew their beer in a professional brewery and send the results on to the Great American Beer Festival. I'm talking about the GABF Pro-Am Competition. If a homebrewer wins an award at an AHA-sanctioned competition and can find a brewery crazy enough to allow them to brew their award winning beer, that beer can be entered in a Best-Of-Show style competition at GABF. One of the few restrictions of this competition is that the beer has to be sold at the participating brewery prior to GABF. Maybe you've seen a few of these around in the past few months:| Homebrewer | Brewery | Beer Name | Style |
| Jim Matt | Brugge Brasserie | Prana Porter | Robust Porter |
| Rodney Weaver | Rock Bottom - DT | Big Brew Special* | English-Style Dark Mild Ale |
| Michael Pearson | Sun King | Chinookie | American-Style India Pale Ale |
| Brian Steuerwald | Upland | ALTered States | German-Style Altbier |
If you've had any of these beers at their respective breweries, you know they're all extremely solid competitors. Maybe you even though they were the brewery's own recipe! Am I patting myself on the back? Maybe. But more importantly, here's to hoping one of my fellow homebrewers can bring home some Pro-Am hardware to Indiana!
If you're going out to GABF this year, you can find the Prana Porter and Big Brew Special on tap on Thursday. Chinookie and ALTered States will be on tap on Saturday.
