Colorado Brewers Honored at GABF 2017

Mike Laur & Rick Mazzola - October 11, 2017

Photo by Rick Mazzola © DG2C

Waverly Tulip earned Square Peg Brewers a gold medal in the Historical Beer category.

If you missed the 2017 edition of GABF, you missed a lot. Lots of beer, awards, more beer, a wedding proposal or two, beer. But you don’t have to go to the festival itself to have a good time during GABF. With a bazillion tours, tap takeovers, tastings and special events, GABF and Denver Beer Week become All Things Beer, right here in Colorado. Lucky Us.

If you made it, then you may have attended Saturday’s Award Ceremony, where 4000+ fellow beer brethren gathered inside and outside a cavernous hall at the Colorado Convention Center to discover who would win the Gold, Silver and Bronze Medals for best beers in America. And would she say yes?

From the start, things were bright for Colorado beer makers. Awards for the Pro-Am competition were first, and Colorado brewers swept the Pro-Am competition, in which award-winning home brewers partner with a craft brewer to make a big batch of beer. Over 118 teams competed this year. Denver Beer Company and AHA member Doug Thiel earned Gold for Just Another Pretty Face - see their smiling faces in the headline photo above. Black Bottle Brewing Company and Daniel Tomkins brewed the Silver-worthy Lichenhainer, and Odell Brewing joined forces with homebrewer Mark Boelman to make Bronze-award-winning Eluxansis.

Photo by Rick Mazzola © DG2C

I'm glad you love beer. Will you marry me?

Things were looking up for Ryan Wibby of Longmont, too. His Moondoor Dunkel won a Silver in the Munich Dunkel category, brewed at his two-year-old Wibby Brewing Company - most excellent for a young, German-focused brewer. But it got better, as he dropped to one knee and proposed during the award ceremony to his girlfriend Robin Brower. She said yes. It was a good day for everyone, and not yet noon. The crowd cheered, beer awaited, upstairs at the festival hall.

Photo by Rick Mazzola © DG2C

Hilltopper’s Pride Kentucky Common Ale won silver for Ironworks Brewery & Pub.

Gee-Eh-Bee-Effi-est.

Boulder-based Brewers Association has run GABF for 36 years, and for the past 31 years has conducted the world’s largest beer competition here in Colorado. From humble hotel-ballroom beginnings to this years’ half-a-million-square-foot venue, GABF is the Super Bowl, Academy Awards, and Nobel Prize of beer making, all rolled into one. Of course, 2017 was the biggest ever. 276 judges from 13 different countries sampled 7,923 beers from 2,217 breweries, and awarded 293 medals to 266 winning breweries. That’s a lotta beer. For brewers, winning at GABF is huge.

Photo by Mike Laur © DG2C

A packed house - overflowing into the hallways - eagerly awaits word whether their brews will be honored at the GABF 2017 Awards Ceremony.

Photo by Rick Mazzola © DG2C

Cellar West wins silver for their specialty saison.

For beer drinkers, it’s beyond huge. GABF represents the largest collection of beer taps on Earth. Most attendees can't walk the entire hall in a four-hour session, let alone sample all the beers. Had you the time and massively-sized liver to handle it all, however, you could have tasted 3,900, one ounce pours served by more than 800 breweries at this one festival. Figure to drink one pint per hour, 16 one-ounce pours every 60 minutes: that’s over10 continuous days of non-stop beer tasting. Cheers!

If you were lucky, you could have sampled one of the truly great award winners from an out-of-the-way brewery you never heard of. Such as Hailstorm Brewing Company of Tinley Park, Illinois. Their Prairie Madness American-Style IPA overcame the longest of odds, beating 407 other IPA’s to earn Gold in this year’s most competitive GABF category. Good stuff, so we heard -

Photo by Rick Mazzola © DG2C

Dry Dock – South Dock won silver for their German-Style Pilsener.

Photo by Rick Mazzola © DG2C

Jessup Farm's Fancy Pants took gold in the Brett Beer category.

Colorado Craft Kicks Ass

Besides all three of the Pro-Am awards, Colorado brewers collected 35 medals for ass-kicking beer. We’ve listed them all here, so that if you missed them at GABF you can go visit these award-winning brewers and sample their award-winning beers. Go on. We’ve included a few photos below, to help you identify the brewers and serve as an archive of what they look like before their heads get big. Do go find them, before the rest of the world finds them first.

If you’re in luck, they’ll have their medal-winning beer on-tap and ready to enjoy. But even if they run out of Woods Monk, Galaxy Dry Hopped Funk Yo Couch, So long and thanks for all the (smoked) fish!, or Razz Against the Machine, there’s sure to be something to delight and enjoy. Use the Drinker’s Guide to Colorado to find your way, and you’ll never be lost for a great beer again.