Young Breweries Look For Gold At GABF

Of the 776 breweries pouring at this year’s Great American Beer Festival, 124 will be attending for the first time.

In order to be eligible to pour at this year’s GABF, breweries must have met certain requirements as of June 21, 2016. Those stipulations include being fully licensed for the manufacture and commercial sale of beer, having a Basic Permit/Brewers Notice on file with the TTB, and having at least one beer currently commercially available.

Home field advantage

Seedstock Brewing

Not surprisingly, Colorado leads the pack with 21 breweries attending for the first time in 2016. There is certainly an advantage to being in-state when it comes to submitting beer and staffing for the festival.

“It was a no-brainer, being right here in Denver,” says Ron Abbot of Seedstock Brewing, “especially being about two miles from the venue.”

Not only is it easier to deliver your beers when you’re right down the road, but Seedstock, which opened in April 2016, sees an added business bonus in easily being able to direct GABF visitors to the source where they can sample more of anything that strikes their fancy.

“We’ll be in the Meet the Brewer section,” says Abbott. “We like interacting with people and we can tell them we’re just down the road.”

Head west, young brewery

Despite the extra logistics involved in attending from out of state along with the cost of registering ($160), submitting beers for competition ($160/each) and having a booth ($250), the overall expense and effort is not so prohibitive that attending GABF in year one doesn’t at least spark a conversation.

“We definitely talked it over a lot before pulling the trigger on entries,” related Matthew Brown, owner and brewer at Pinellas Ale Works St. Petersburg, Fla. “You can’t get a medal if you don’t enter. Attending the festival was a no-brainer after entering the competition.”

Pinellas opened in January 2016, the brainchild of Brown and Dennis Decker, two friends and award-winning homebrewers. Their experience as homebrewers got them comfortable brewing for competition and familiar with following style guidelines.

“GABF is a logical progression of the fun we had competing,” says Brown. “It’s the big stage and we set out to make the best beer possible, so we wanted to compete with the best. It’s a long shot with so many great breweries entering, but a medal would be a huge accomplishment in our first year.”

Staying true to the mission

Libertine Brewing

For some breweries, attending GABF in their first year of existence made sense. For others, the decision was more measured, ensuring that the ideals a business was founded on were not forgotten.

“We’re trying to grow everything organically,” says Jason Hudson of Libertine Brewing. “It goes back to where our beer comes from…While it is about making great beer and getting everyone to know we’re making great beer it’s also about not putting the cart in front of the horse. We want to make sure everything is right in terms of when things are going to happen.”

Libertine was founded in 2012 and uses an open-top coolship to capture local wild yeast for the fermentation process, creating a terroir unique to California’s Central Coast.

Brotherhood of brewers

Beyond the pride that accompanies introducing a labor of love to a wider audience, there’s also the opportunity to better connect with peers and influencers.

“It has been on my craft beer bucket list for several years now,” said Kevin Sharpe, President and Founder of Dark City Brewing Co., of attending GABF. Opened in January 2016, Dark City is Asbury Park, New Jersey’s first craft brewery.

“It is a crazy surreal feeling to be attending for the first time as the owner of a participating brewery,” he added. “As a nearly nine-month-old, short-staffed brewery, we attend every festival we hear about. I personally work the table at every one that that I can because I feel it is important to meet the people statewide who will be seeking out and buying the beer. The opportunity to attend the largest festival in the country and pour side-by-side with all of the breweries I’ve looked up to and meet the people from them is a huge honor.”

Opinions that matter

With 7,000+ beers entered in competition, judges deserve kudos for simply getting through the full slate of tastings before the award ceremony Saturday morning. However, brewers can also look forward to receiving valuable tasting notes. According to the GABF guidebook, “brewers should each receive a minimum of three beer-tasting forms for each beer entered.” Feedback on your craft is an aspect that cannot be overstated.

“The most important thing was to get some good feedback from some good judges,” explains Abbott of Seedstock. “I think some unbiased, unadulterated feedback could improve our beers… I’ve heard that the feedback is really constructive. The kind that brewers want.”

Recognizing brewing excellence

And, of course, should the judges smile favorably on a particular beer bestowing a GABF medal upon it, that realization has wide-ranging meaning.

“A gold medal would be huge,” says Hudson of Libertine. “Obviously it’s what everyone is gunning for. It’s the empty spot on our shelf…We know we make great beer and we really just want everyone to know it. We feel like the recognition of a big festival will really punctuate what we’ve been working hard to create.”

“If we were to win a medal for any of our beers that would be a dream come true,” adds Sharpe. “A GABF medal would validate the extreme amount of energy and time that myself and my team have put in over the last few years to make this all happen. It would also be a boost to the rapidly growing and often underestimated New Jersey craft beer scene.”

“[A medal] would be a very bright feather in our cap,” concludes Brown, from Pinellas. “It would be nice validation that our beer can stand with all the other great breweries in the country.”