It looks like Southern California is the place to drink for craft beer lovers because many local breweries won gold medals at the prestigious Great American Beer Festival.
With a total of 8,836 beers entered by breweries across the country, three local breweries won several top prizes at the competition, which took place in Denver earlier this month..
“I didn’t think it was real. I was in shock for a second,” said James Sullivan, marketing director for Highland Park Brewery near Chinatown, which won the Brewery Group Brewery and Brewer of the Year award.
The competition is organized by The Brewers Association, a trade association that represents more than 5,000 U.S. breweries. The Association’s Great American Beer Festival is one of the most prestigious beer competitions in the world with brewers comparing it to the Grammy or Oscars of the beer world.
Besides the three top winners, several other area breweries also won gold medals in various categories.
“I think the coolest part is to see so many of our friends winning as well because there’s a lot of good beer out there,” Sullivan said.
Hitting Gold
Highland Park Brewery also tied for the most medals won at the competition with a total of four gold medals. It matched Apogee Brewing Company from Grover Beach in San Luis Obispo County, which earned one gold and three bronze medals.
“I was watching from home and when that first gold medal got announced I was super excited, and then later on they just kept coming and it was super awesome and super exciting,” Sullivan said.
Long Beach brewers came in on top as well with two breweries winning the two most popular categories.
Ambitious Ales brought home the gold in the Juicy/Hazy IPA category for its Professional Human Being beer. With the most entries at 349 beers, The Hazy IPA was the most popular category at the festival. The second most popular, with 292 entries, was the West Coast IPA category, which was won by Trademark Brewing with its Codebreaker beer. And not to be outdone, Highland Park Brewery’s aptly named Competition beer won the gold medal in the third most popular category, the American Style IPA, which had a total of 217 entries.
“We were shocked to win just because we were surrounded by so many amazing brewers in that room especially for such a prestigious category,” said Garrett Carroll, head brewer and co-founder of Ambitious Ales, which opened in Long Beach’s Bixby Knolls neighborhood in 2019.
It was founded by Carroll with friends Jon Cuthbert, Juan Carrillo and Jerome De Leon, who started off as homebrewers.
“We’ve been doing this for such a long time all together. It’s a long journey so to get to this point is a great achievement professionally for the brewery and a great achievement for us as business partners and friends,” Carrillo said.
The winning beer quickly sold out at the brewery’s taproom after its big win. But the brewers are already working on a new batch which should be ready on Oct. 28.
For Sterling and Ilana Steffen, the husband and wife duo behind Trademark Brewing near downtown Long Beach, the win was an unbelievable moment.
“I was watching the broadcast and when I heard it I started screaming and picked up my wife and business partner Ilana and gave her a big squeeze. We scared the hell out of the kids because we were yelling so much,” Steffen said.
“We’re over the moon. We’re still pinching ourselves. We believe it because we have confidence in our beer but it’s still a really humbling moment to be recognized by our peers,” said Steffen, who started brewing at home before meeting his future wife, who also happened to be a big beer lover.
Back at Highland Park Brewery Sullivan said they still feel like they’re floating on cloud nine.
“Everyone has been in a great mood and it’s been real fun the last few days,” he said. But for those who want to try the brewery’s gold winning beers better hurry up because they’re already running low.
“After we won people came in and were ordering all four of our gold medal beers, that was their way of supporting us so we’re running low,” Sullivan said.
These are the other local breweries that won gold medals this year in various categories:
Audio Graph Beer Co., Los Angeles
Everywhere Beer Co., Orange
Far Field Beer Co., Hawthorne
Green Cheek Beer Co., Costa Mesa
Greywolf Brewing, Norco
Riip Beer Co., Huntington Beach
For a full list of winners go to greatamericanbeerfestival.com
