Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Texas Breweries at 2013 Great American Beer Festival

The brewery registration for the 2013 Great American Beer Festival filled up in under 2 hours, leaving many well known and past winning breweries locked out from being able to register. A wait list quickly grew and although a lot of those breweries were eventually offered spots on the convention floor to pour their beer, they weren't necessarily able to enter any beer for the competition, leaving them to decide if it was still worth it for them to attend. For people who have attended past GABF tasting sessions, booths for some big name breweries may be noticeably missing this year. It will be interesting to see what changes will be made for the registration process next year since the number of craft breweries is only continuing to increase.

There are currently 652 attending breweries listed on the GABF website (as of August 1st), but it does not specifically indicate if all of them will be in the convention hall.

UPDATED: As of Oct 1st, the GABF website now indicate 624 breweries will be pouring beer on the convention floor with the following 36 breweries from Texas:

(512) Brewing Co.
903 Brewers
Adelbert's Brewery
Austin Beer Garden Brewing Co.
Austin Beerworks
Black Star Co-op Pub & Brewery
Buffalo Bayou Brewing Co.
Cedar Creek Brewery
Circle Brewing Co.
Community Brewing Co.
Cornel's Brewing Co.
Deep Ellum Brewing Co.
Flix Brewhouse
Freetail Brewing Co.
Hops & Grain Brewery
Humperdink's Restaurant & Brewery
Independence Brewing Co.
Karbach Brewing Co.
Lakewood Brewing Co.
Live Oak Brewing Co.
Namaste Brewing (Whip In)
No Label Brewing Co.
North By Northwest Restaurant and Brewery
Pendernales Brewing Co.
Peticolas Brewing Co.
Pint House Pizza
Rahr & Sons Brewing Co.
Real Ale Brewing Co.
Revolver Brewing Co.
Rogness Brewing Co.
Saint Arnold Brewing Co.
Spoetzl Brewery (Shiner)
Texas Big Beer Brewery
Texian Brewing Co.
Uncle Billy's Brew & Que
Zio Carlo Magnolia Brewpub

Assuming this list is now correct, there will be 36 Texas breweries this year, up from 30 in 2012 and 22 in 2011.  As a recap, the following Texas breweries won medals in the 2012 GABF competition:

Gold Bottle Rocket Uncle Billy's Brew & Que - Lake Travis Kellerbier or Zwickelbier
Gold Shiner Oktoberfest Spoetzl Brewery German-Style Märzen
Gold Shiner Bock Spoetzl Brewery American-Style Dark Lager
Gold Shiner Bohemian Spoetzl Brewery German-Style Schwarzbier
Gold Royal Scandal Peticolas Brewing Co. Classic English-Style Pale Ale
Silver Hans' Pils Real Ale Brewing Co. German-Style Pilsener
Silver Firemans #4 Real Ale Brewing Co. Golden or Blonde Ale
Silver Iron Thistle Rahr & Sons Brewing Scotch Ale
Bronze Uberbrau Humperdinks Restaurant and Brewery American-Style Amber Lager

Good luck to all breweries who have beer entered in the competition this year and I look forward to sampling it on the convention floor.

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