06 Oct Indiana Breweries Strike Gold at Great American Beer Festival
by Mark E. Lasbury for Indiana On Tap
Seven Indiana breweries garnered a total of nine medals at the 2019 GABF Competition in Denver, CO this Saturday (the 5th). The leader was Sun King Brewing with three medals for original brewery and one for the small batch brewery in Fishers. The other medaling breweries were Metazoa Brewing, Upland Brewing, Blind Owl Brewery, Four Day Ray Brewing, and Chilly Water Brewing. This medal haul placed Indiana 9th in the medal count for all states, while ranking only 15th in the number of breweries in the state.
This 33rd iteration of the GABF competition was the largest ever, with 9500 entered beers from 2,295 different breweries, with 107 categories covering 174 different styles of beer. Only 283 breweries were able to take one or more of the 318 medals home, meaning that fewer than 33 breweries won more than one medal. Sun King matched top honors with Rowley Farmhouse Ales of Santa Fe, NM by winning their three medals. And if you counted the small batch brewery medal along with the original brewery’ (I don’t), then they took home more than another other brewery.
image credit: craftbeer.com
Indiana again proved to be stiff competition in the barrel-aged beer and sour beer worlds by taking two medals in the Fruited Wood- and Barrel-Aged Sour Beer category, gold for Sun King and silver for Upland. What’s more, Indiana breweries did well in some of the categories with the most entries, highlighted by Blind Owl Brewery’s gold medal in the German Style Pilsener group. There were 183 beers vying for medals in this category, fourth most of any group of beers in the competition.
Here are the names of the beers, breweries, categories, and number of entries for each of the Indiana winning beers:
Sun King Brewing – Getting By On Central Time, a gold medal in the Collaboration beer competition, a beer made with the Brewers of Indiana Guild Beer Brigade, 70 entries
image credit: Sun King Brewing
Sun King Brewing – Midnight Choir, a gold medal in the Fruited Wood- and Barrel-Aged Sour Beers, 128 entries
Sun King Brewing – Gran Muckle, a silver medal in the Wood- and Barrel-Aged beer category, 66 entries
Sun King Small Batch Brewery – Eis Nine, a gold medal in the German-Style Doppelbock or Eisbock group, 57 entries
Metazoa Brewing – Meadowlark, a gold medal in the Classic Saison group, 106 entries
Blind Owl Brewery – Parliament Drive, a gold medal in the German-style Pilsener category, 183 entries
Upland Brewing – Crimson Cherry Variant, a silver medal in the Fruited Wood- and Barrel-Aged Sour Beers, 128 entries
Four Day Ray – Afterburner Smoked Lager, a silver medal in the Historical Beer group, 47 entries (no gold was awarded in this group, making the Afterburner the top beer in the category)
Chilly Water Brewing – Moonlight Sonata, a bronze medal in the Vienna-style Lager category, 93 entries.
Congratulations to all the winning breweries. Get out and support Indiana beer and how they bring fame to our state.
banner image credit: Brewers Association
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