Oregon breweries won big at this year’s Great American Beer Festival, taking home 22 total medals. Portland’s own Breakside Brewery took gold for Breakside IPA in the highly competitive American-Style IPA category, as well as earning a bronze for Breakside Wanderlust IPA. Ground Breaker Brewing also took home a gold for Dark Ale, while four other Portland natives took silvers including The Commons for Myrtle, Widmer Brothers for Hefeweizen, Old Town for I’d Like to Buy the World a Kolsch and 13 Virtues for Weizenbock.

Overall, the Brewers Association awarded 268 medals in 90 categories at this year’s Great American Beer Festival. This year, total entries reached 5,507, an increase of about 16%. It took 222 judges from 10 countries to choose the winners. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.

For 12 years running now, the most-entered category is and was again American-Style India Pale Ale (IPA), which had 279 different brews vying for a medal. This year’s second-most popular category was the broad Herb and Spice Beer (150 entries), followed by the American-Style Pale Ale (145 entries). Breweries continue to step up their game, which was proven by a four-way tie between 10 Barrel Brewing, Barley Brown’s Brew Pub, Devil’s Backbone, and Left Hand Brewing for most medals won (each taking home three).

Interestingly, there were two categories in which not all medals were awarded: no gold in Golden or Blonde Ale and no silver given in English-Style Brown Ale.

Photo © Brewers Association