Over the weekend, the Brewers Association held its 30th Great American Beer Festival, bringing tens of thousands of craft beer lovers to Denver for a three-day tasting extravaganza. In addition to drinkers who came to have fun, a panel of professional beer judges came to the city and spent a week judging hundreds of entries in the annual beer competition.



When it was first held, in 1987, the competition had entries in just a dozen categories — this year there were 84, broken down further into 135 sub-genres. Winners were announced on Saturday morning, and there were a couple of local winners.



The biggest score came for brand new Union Craft Brewing, which won Gold in German-Style Altbier for Balt Altbier (we tasted it at the fest, and it was as crisp and flavorful as ever). Union also picked up three medals at the Maryland Governor’s Cup, so it was a banner weekend for the newcomer. Back at GABF, DuClaw Brewing took home a silver for X-1 in the Chocolate Beer category.



Check out a full list of this year’s winners (and past winners) here, and let us know, do you agree with the judges’ decisions? Who would you have picked to win?

Tags: Beer