The Great American Beer Festival (GABF) Competition, the largest commercial beer competition in the world, marked the largest competition to date in 2021, with medals awarded in 97 different beer categories covering 175 different beer styles.
“Despite being forced to cancel the festival portion of GABF, our brewing community rallied together to make this year’s GABF competition one for the books—our largest competition judged to date,” said Chris Swersey, competition director, Great American Beer Festival. “Judges continue to be impressed with the quality and innovation of all entries they evaluated. The Brewers Association is proud to honor this year’s deserving winners. We look forward to celebrating in person together next year.”
170 judges evaluated the entries, in 34 sessions over 17 days, with strict health and safety measures in place. All in all, 9680 beers were submitted this year from 2192 different breweries and all 50 states.
Congratulations to all of our North Carolina medal-winning breweries! #NCBeer won 15 medals this year overall (the most since 2016) in the 2021 GABF awards, 12 of which were awarded to independent #NCBeer craft breweries! Especially proud of the following NC Craft Brewers Guild members (listed with their medal-winning beer):