Four Arizona breweries from across the state brought home medals from the Great American Beer Festival in Colorado Saturday.
BJ’s Restaurant & Brewery in Chandler took home the gold medal for its Magnolia’s Peach in the Fruit Wheat Beer category and Flagstaff’s Beaver Street Brewery won gold for its R & R Oatmeal Stout.
Tucson’s Barrio Brewing Co. won bronze for its Barrio Rojo in the Scottish-Style Ale category, and Huss Brewing from Tempe took home the bronze for the Husstler in the Sweet Stout or Cream Stout category.
The GABF is the world’s largest commercial beer competition and, this year, there were more than 6,600 competition entries hailing from more than 1,500 breweries nationwide, according to a press release.
Each year at the competition, 275 medals are awarded in 92 beer categories.
Beaver Street Brewery celebrated by giving out $3 pints of its winning beer all day Saturday.
Fifteen Arizona breweries were represented at the GABF this year.
The Arizona craft beer industry has been growing in recent years, and the beer industry as a whole had an economic output of about $4.3 billion in 2014 in the state.
"These four wins provide further evidence of what we Arizonans already know – that what we’re brewing here is not only on par, but able to surpass what’s being made in some of the nation’s biggest and most renowned beer-brewing cities and states," according to Rob Fullmer, Executive Director of the Arizona Craft Brewer's Guild.
The guild represents 74 Arizona breweries. They were one of 20 state guilds that had booths at the event in Boulder.
