THE WINNERS ARE ...
Six Bay Area breweries take gold at the Great American Beer Festival
The pandemic may have canceled the Great American Beer Festival once again. But the 35th annual festival-sponsored competition to determine the nation’s best beers moved forward, with six Bay Area breweries bringing home gold medals for their brews.
Judging took place just outside Denver, Colorado, over 17 days early last month — I was there for six of those days — with 170 judges sampling 9,680 beers submitted by more than 2,000 breweries across the nation. The biggest beer category — out of 97 distinct types — was juicy or hazy IPA, which should surprise no one. The popularity of that beer style has gone through the roof.
Once again, California breweries brought home more medals than any other state: 60 out of 290. Bay Area beer makers won 11 of those medals, including six golds.
One of those gold medals went to Santa Rosa’s Third Street Aleworks for its Annadel Pale Ale, a beer that won a bronze in 2017 and a silver in 2019 at the festival and took home multiple awards, including a gold medal, at the festival’s sister competition, the World Beer Cup. Annadel is an exquisitely balanced English-style pale ale, which means while it is hop forward, it’s very restrained and balanced, exhibiting just a hint of hop spiciness.
Oakland’s Ghost Town Brewing earned a gold medal in the highly competitive imperial IPA category for its Nose Goblin. This version, which has already sold out, was brewed with Nelson, Strata and Mosaic hop varieties. The brewery is already working on a new version, which will have a different trio of hop varieties but still be 9.2% alcohol by volume and dangerously smooth.
San Jose’s Strike Brewing struck gold with its Big Wall stout. The 9% ABV imperial stout, which also won gold at the World Beer Cup, is a blend of roasted and dark crystal malts that impart dark chocolate and espresso flavors.
Santa Rosa’s Seismic Brewing took gold in the American-style lager division with its Tremor California Light Lager. It’s a hyperlocal lager that you may recall from a recent column: a beer created from ingredients all grown or processed within 12 miles of the Sonoma County brewery.
Meanwhile, San Francisco’s Barebottle Brewing (the brewery has a taproom in Santa Clara, too) brought home a gold medal for its Cryo Chemistry Hazy IPA in the juicy or hazy imperial IPA category. The 7.6% ABV hazy is brewed with four grains, including wheat, oats and rye. Nine hop varieties, including three Cryo types, account for its 56 International Bitterness Units. Cryo hops are created by taking whole cone hops and separating them into two components, the bract (or leaves) and the lupulin, the yellow powder in hops that contains many of the acids and essential oils, which give beer its characteristic hop aromas and flavors, in concentrated form. Beers brewed with Cryo hops tend to be powerfully aromatic and flavorful.
The final gold medal was for The Cushman, brewed by Tracy’s Morgan Territory Brewing in the Dortmund or German-style Oktoberfest category. The Cushman is its interpretation of a Munich helles lager, made with 100% German malts and Saphir hops, a newer variety of German hops.
Other winners
Half Moon Bay’s Hop Dogma won a silver medal for its Venti Is Large in the coffee stout or porter category. Berkeley’s Rare Barrel picked up a bronze for Steep Ravine in the fruited woodand barrel-aged sour beer category, as did Alameda’s Almanac Beer Co. for its Gemini Mind Trick in the mixedculture brett beer category. Also winning bronze: Oakland’s Original Pattern Brewing for Field of Vision in the international pale ale category and Watsonville’s Corralitos Brewing for South Forty in the American-style pale ale category.