What a difference a year can make.

By 9pm of last year’s opening session on Thursday evening, I had traversed most of the festival grounds and left the festival feeling underwhelmed, confused and somewhat dejected. After 11 years of covering the biggest and best beer festival in the country, the 2023 Great American Beer Festival was feeling a little stale, to put it politely.

Aside from the celebratory bagpipe procession that has become an annual tradition, the festival itself largely lacked the pomp and circumstance that historically established the GABF above a now-bloated beer festival landscape. Most notably, there was a lack of over-the-top brewery booth designs (Colorado-local, WeldWerks Brewing, and End-Cap Stem Ciders were the only booths that really invested in torches), only a handful of breweries helped fuel the hype with special timed releases, and even more alarmingly marked the disappearance of several returning festival staples, including Fremont, Beachwood Brewery, Jester King, New Glarus, Bells Brewery, Brooklyn Brewery, Cigar City and even industry pioneer New Belgium.

However, while 2023 felt like the start of a potential decline for craft beer’s core, the 2024 Great American Beer Festival saw some risky and polarizing swings that largely paid off. GABF is back. And while the new changes won’t be for everyone, they are a necessary breath of fresh air that will help ensure the long-term relevance of a 42-year-old festival.

Subject areas

The most notable and eye-catching change to this year’s event was the division of breweries into “themed areas.” Consisting of “Fright”, a Halloween-themed area, “Blast-Off”, a space-themed area that includes “otherworldly experiences” such as the international area “Score!”, a sports-themed area, “Meet & Mingle” , a reinvented “Meet the Brewer” experience, “Chill,” a backyard gathering with music, lawn games and exclusive beers, and “Prost,” an Oktoberfest-inspired beer garden area. The GABF presence took a more experiential approach, in contrast to its historical layout by geographical region (or the year-long alphabetical experiment). All thematic areas were well executed, except that Blast-Off and Fright were a bit too dark.

While some industry traditionalists may turn their noses up at this dramatic change in floor plan, it’s important to remember that the GABF itself is primarily aimed at a beer audience. Sure, there are a handful of die-hards looking for certain hype beers or taking the opportunity to drink beer straight from the likes of Garrett Oliver, Kim Jordan and Sam Calagione, but if you’re going to take a quick look, be honest when you take a survey If you do this to attendees, you’ll probably find that the actual majority of attendees are people who still generally like beer, but are primarily there for the party.

This move towards incorporating experiential spaces has helped encourage more breweries to invest in creating a memorable stand design while inviting attendees to experience GABF in a completely different way.

Without a clear geographic focus, GABF also returns to its core mission of encouraging people to discover new breweries.

Cider / Seltzer / RTDs / Non-Alcoholic

The other significant change to this year’s festival was the greater presence of “beyond beer” drinks, including cider, seltzer, ready-to-drink cocktails and non-alcoholic options. As taste preferences evolve, producers must also evolve to stay relevant. So the Brewers Association has once again made the right decision and expanded its category offering to attract a broader base of festival goers. Once again, the only people sticking to the idea that GABF should only serve independent craft beer are the people who aren’t worried about ticket sales. For years, GABF has become more than just beer. Attendees are there for the party, for the experiences, for the chance to try and experience new things, and for far too long the festival has excluded those who either can’t drink beer or prefer other options but still celebrate with their friends want .

Night One’s best discoveries and recommendations

Ok, enough of the soapbox, let’s get to what people really want to know… Who were the biggest standouts? First of all, a big thank you to the breweries who not only participated in this year’s festival, but did their best to make GABF fun again. Big names like Firestone Walker, Sierra Nevada, WeldWerks, Cerveceria Colorado and Howdy Beer brought back the big booth installations and showed creativity with their booth designs and activations. In fact, Cerveceria Colorado set up an entire wrestling ring just outside the “Score” area for hourly wrestling matches, and Howdy Beer once again brought back mechanical bull riding.

After several years of creating top-notch culinary-inspired beers, it has become a must to visit the WeldWerks Brewing booth at the start of the festival to find out what crazy blend the brewing team has come up with for GABF and again this year they didn’t have us disappointed. After previous releases that included a spaghetti gose, a taco gose and a crab rangoon gose, the Greeley-based brewery debuted a soy sauce-aged sushi gose this year. And even though the flavor profile doesn’t make sense, the brewing team managed to perfectly capture the umami flavors of seaweed and soy sauce, a subtle, distinct note of pickled ginger, and the softness associated with rice. This shouldn’t work either, but it definitely does and is 100% worth trying paired with a furikake-spiced fried rice ball and an aioli made with the beer.

Other hidden gems to put on your agenda for the rest of the weekend include a stop in the international section at the “Blast Off” area to explore some imported beers, including Outer Range, which offers cans of Hazy IPAs that Brewed in the French Alps location. Also keep an eye out for a scaled-down State Guild line, featuring beers from breweries not served on the general festival grounds. Yesterday at New York Guild they poured The Fillings Are Mutual, a smoothie sour from the Mortalis x Other Half collaboration that tasted like grape jelly and granola parfait dessert.

Best beers/Longest lines/Beers that could start early

While bigger names like Three Floyds, Revolution and WeldWerks will get the most hype, the Murderer brewery series you should definitely explore is in the cheers zone. Starting at booth C-57 and running the entire length of the line, heavyweights like Our Mutual Friend Brewery, Phantom Farms (more on that below), Pinthouse, Pure Project and Radiant can be found right next to each other. Pure Project’s Corylus is still one of the the best barrel-aged stouts to be found at the festival.

• Three Floyds
• revolution
• Overthrow Goliath
• WeldWerks
• Samuel Adams for the timed release of Utopias (stop by the booth for the stated time)

Hidden gems

One of the best overall performances of the evening came from Original Pattern Brewing. The Oakland, California-based brewery is pouring one of the best pilsners (Country Doctor) available on the festival floor, along with a phenomenal IPA made with fresh hops in Strata Squish.

Trap Door Brewing from Washougal, WA was also impressive, showcasing an incredibly diverse lineup including Fresher than Fresh, a brilliant Fresh Hop West Coast IPA, Interiority 2023, a barrel-aged stout aged 15 months in Westward whiskey barrels and topped with cacao nibs and vanilla beans from Ecuador, Indonesia, Uganda and Madagascar as well as one of the best fruity sour/wild beers of the festival. Untitled #8 is a collaboration between Trap Door and (coincidentally their GABF booth neighbors) True Anomaly from Houston, TX. This is a Saison aged in neutral oak barrels with 4 different types of Brett and fermented on 700 pounds of Rich Lady peaches and their pits from Baird Family Orchards, with the addition of Pinot Noir grape pomace and then bottled with the addition of local honey.

Phantom Farms from Cumberland, Rhode Island was an absolute revelation. While their standout beer was a Patagonian pepper saison, it was one of the most technically sound brews we discovered at the festival. Led by husband-and-wife team Oscar Garrido and Andrea Riera from Chile, Phantom Farms’ brewing program has already attracted the attention and support of legendary brewer Peter Bouckaert.

As we continued to trace the New Belgium alumni family tree, we also came across former New Belgium star Eric Salazar, who now brews for Strangebird Beer in Rochester, NY. The legendary brewer, who was instrumental in building several sour projects during his time at New Belgium, including Eric’s Ale, flexed his muscles with Rode Vogel, a Flanders-style red wine.

• • Pax Verum Ruins of Mutiny – West Coast IPA
  • Phantom Farms – Sacred Tree Specialty Saison with Patagonian Pepper
  • Trap Door Brewing – Untitled #8
  • Strangebird Beer – Rode Vogel
  • Seapine Brewing – Rainbow Suspenders Hazy IPA
  • Round Trip Brewing – Instant Krüsch Extra Pale Kölsch
  • PIVO Brewery – Old Balltown BBBASCDCBMS