Thousands of beers from hundreds of breweries. The sheer amount of beers available to try at the Great American Beer Festival boggles the mind. Formulating some kind of actionable plan that doesn’t get tossed after your third double IPA is a laughable task. So here’s our GABF beer guide and picks for a few beers we’re going to try when our glasses hit the serving tables at this year’s GABF in Denver.

Chai Eye Captain
Third Eye Brewing
Hamilton, Ohio
Prost! – Booth C-77

A 2023 GABF gold medalist in the Herb and Spice Beer category, this cleverly named beer from Third Eye Brewing in Ohio, helped propel the brewery to be named the 2023 Brewery of the Year (1,001 to 2000 barrels) at the festival. Expressing the aromatic essence of chai tea, with notes of cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and clove, it’s the ideal beer for easing your way into fall.

Smoked Porter
Alaskan Brewing Company
Juneau, Alaska
Score – Booth D-5

One of the most award-winning beers in the history of the GABF, Alaskan’s Smoked Porter is a must try for those looking to expand their palates. Born from substantial research about the challenges and traditions of brewing in southeastern Alaska, Alaskan’s Smoked Porter embraces that the small brewer at the turn of the century had to roast his own grains to make porter. As the local wood was alder, this smoked porter reaffirms the old ways of Alaskan breweries. As the brewery’s co-founder Geoff Larson told me years ago, “that’s part of our heritage and let’s put it in a glass.” And if you’re interested in more smoke beer fun, join the This Week In Rauchbier Facebook group.

La Maison du Bang!
Breakside Brewery
Milwaukie, Oregon
Prost – Booth: C-20

This fourteen-percent banger from Breakside Brewery is a barrel-aged release featuring casks from Oregon distillers, including Clear Creek and Stone Barn Brandyworks. Breakside blends three barleywines of different ages, including some aged in apple brandy casks and specialty bourbon and walnut liqueur barrels. According to the brewery, its team “strove to achieve a delicate balance between the expression of the spirits; this meant leaning into some softer beers and a quieter Bourbon expression overall.” The resulting beer is decadent and evokes fall and the winter to come. Thank god for 1-ounce pours. While at the booth, also try Breakside’s Passionfruit Sour Ale, a gold medalist at the 2021 GABF.

Your Worst Nightmare
Cloudburst Brewing
Seattle, Washington
Prost! – Booth: C-27

A brewery known for its hazies can also brew some fun seasonal beers, and with a story to tell. Cloudburst Brewing’s staff use a “a milk chocolatey base beer brewed with Libby’s canned pumpkin and spiced with a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice and clove” to create this 7-percent ABV pumpkin beer. The name plays on the sale of Elysian Brewing, known for its pumpkin beers and pumpkin themed beer fest, to AB-InBev in 2015. While Cloudburst casts the sale as a “Cantwellian Dystopia”–a reference to Dick Cantwell, an Elysian co-owner who reportedly opposed the sale–this beer will raise the spirits of craft brewers, not just dump your brewery in a fire sale years later. 

Head Hunter
Fat Head’s Brewing
Middleburg Heights, Ohio
Blast Off – Booth: A-52

This powerful West Coast IPA from Fat Head’s Brewing has long dominated the awards, including a nearly impossible 2023 two-fer with gold medal wins at both the World Beer Cup and GABF that year in the highly competitive American IPA category. Packed with juicy pine, grapefruit, citrus, and pineapple notes, everything’s better with a Head Hunter in your glass.

Colette
Great Divide Brewing Co
Denver, Colorado
Blast Off – Booth: A-24

With a beer list that the brewery could have brought to the GABF in 2004, Great Divide stands as a reminder that if you brew great beer, changing just for its own sake can be folly. In choosing between Titan, Yeti, Colette, Samurai, and Denver Pale Ale (which was admittedly reformulated from an English-style IPA into an American one back in 2016), I’m going with Colette. The brewery’s homage to Belgian saisons, Great Divide blends four different yeast strains to create a dry, refreshing, and classic saison that reminds you of what beer tasted like decades ago.

Big Bock Energy
Morgan Territory Brewing
Tracy, California
Prost! – Booth: C-54

With a silver medal at the 2022 World Beer Cup and a bronze at the 2022 GABF, Morgan Territory Brewing knows how to make a bock beer. With a big German malt backbone, Big Bock Energy delivers flavors of caramel, toffee, and dark fruit, balanced by toasted Munich malts. With a 7.5-percent ABV, there’s plenty of malt sweetness to go around but it remains approachable and drinkable. 

Trail Pass NA IPA
Sierra Nevada Brewing
Chico, California
Booth 44

Sierra Nevada has long been a craft beer stalwart and pioneer and it has continued that tradition with its excellent non-alcoholic beer option, Trail Pass NA IPA. This GABF features more NA beer options than ever before and it’s an opportunity to try them all in one place and as a measure of pacing yourself while also enjoying some new beers and flavors. Trail Pass is likely to be one of the best NA beers you’ll try. Available at the Non-Alcohol Pouring Station.

We hope our 2024 GABF beer guide will help provide some direction as you happily roam the aisles. Be sure to send us your favorites on social media.

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