There's a new milk king in town. The 2024 GABF Awards wrapped up on Saturday, with New Mexico (specifically Albuquerque) breweries taking home three medals. That's one more than in the 2023 awards. The highest medal count for NM was eight, back in 2014. Brady McKeown and his crew over at Quarter Celtic took the first NM medal with a Gold for Vienna Fest Beer in the Vienna Lager category. Whoever complains about there not being enough lagers is living in 2017. There were 123 entries in the Vienna Lager category. Compare that with 117 in the Imperial IPA category!
The next, and final winners from NM were in the Cream or Sweet Stout category. Boxing Bear took Silver with their Chocolate Milk Stout, marking the third time that beer has medaled (Gold in 2016 and Silver in 2015). Three of the five medals Boxing Bear has taken at GABF have been for Chocolate Milk Stout, making that beer their golden cow. The Gold medal this year went to Tractor Brewing for their Mustachio Milk Stout. That's the very first GABF medal for Tractor! Congratulations to the NM winners.
Other interesting award musings: 285 judges were involved in choosing winners from 8,836 entries, for an average of 31 beers tried per judge. I beat that on Wednesday pre-GABF, but I had to pay a lot more than the judges. 1,869 breweries and cideries had entries this year. The Juicy of Hazy India Pale category had the most entries, with 349. That's 132 more than the American Style India Pale category, which used to reign for years as the largest category. Hard to believe, but the German Style Oktoberfest or Dortmunder category had the 4th most entries this year, with 210. The medal factory that is Morgan Territory took three more, including Gold in the Imperial IPA category. That's 21 GABF medals for the brewery that continues to fly under the radar. 10 Barrel racked up 6 medals at the fest. Will their recent layoff of their Innovation Team affect medal count in the future? I already knew this, but the judges agree that California reigns when it comes to Juicy of Hazy Imperial IPAs, as CA swept the category. DDH Pillow from LA's Highland Park took the Gold. That's two years in a row! And Highland Park also won the top prize, being named Brewery Group Brewery and Brewer of the Year. California breweries also took the top awards in the 1,001-2,000 Barrels and 2,001-5,000 Barrels Brewery Group and Brewer of the Year, with Orange's Everywhere and Huntingtion Beach's Riip winning, respectively. The least-entered category this year was American Sour Ale, with 19 entries. No, I'm not counting the NA category that only had 9 entries. Of the 326 medals awarded, 25 went to breweries who have never medaled.
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