Bend Earns Reputation as Beer Mecca

Credit: Courtesy Great American Beer Festival

Each year, confident American craft brewers send their beers to Denver, Colorado, to be judged at the most prestigious competition in the country, if not the world: the Great American Beer Festival, produced by the Brewers Association. For this year’s 38th annual competition, 8,836 beers were submitted covering all 50 states. As always, California came out ahead with a haul of 71 medals. (It’s home to thrice as many breweries as Oregon.) Colorado’s impressive 40 medals also outnumbered Oregon’s, but didn’t beat the Beaver State (third place with 38 medals) as a metric of medals-per-brewery.

To boot, more of that gold, silver and bronze rainbow returned home to Central Oregon than to Portland.

The 12 precious metals now adorning taprooms, offices, or brewhouses were awarded to seven local breweries: 10 Barrel Brewing (6), Sunriver Brewing (3), Deschutes Brewery (3), Worthy Brewing (1), Monkless Belgian Ales (1), Bend Brewing Co. (1), and brand-new Terranaut Beer (1). The reason those collective honors amount to 16 and not 12 medals is because both 10 Barrel and Deschutes won a pair each from their Portland brewpubs. (Breweries are limited to entering five beers, but companies operating multiple brewhouses can submit five per facility.)

While 10 Barrel earned six medals overall (two golds, one silver, three bronzes), I don’t imagine this feat will be replicated in the future. That’s because the award-winning beers were created by 10 Barrel’s innovation team, all of whom were terminated by new owner Tilray Brands in September. The company has earned a total of 26 GABF medals.

Sunriver Brewing earned three medals en route to being crowned Brewery of the Year (within the mid-sized category, specified for breweries that produce 5 to 15 thousand barrels annually). Again! This year marked Fuzztail Hefeweizen’s third medal in eight years and returned to gold status. Sunriver’s other two medals came from Che Figata (silver, Italian-style Pilsner) and Something Dank This Way Comes (gold, American-style strong pale ale, which is basically one of the IPA categories).

Brett Thomas, director of brewing operations, said, “It’s a tremendous honor to be named GABF Brewery of the Year for a second time. Head Brewer Patrick Raasch, along with our incredible brewery team, continues to produce some of the best beer in the world.”

Deschutes’ three medals were awarded to Hachimitsu Mai (gold, honey beer), Patagonia Provisions Non-Alcoholic Kernza Golden Brew (gold, specialty non-alcoholic beer), and Fresh Hop King Crispy (bronze, fresh-hop beer). This brings Bend’s oldest and largest brewery’s GABF total to 53 medals in its 36 years of entering — the second most of any craft brewery after Firestone-Walker Brewing Company headquartered in Paso Robles, California.

Finally, one medal was awarded to Worthy (silver for Farm Out in the saison category), Monkless Belgian Ales (silver, Capitulation in American-Belgo-style ale), Bend Brewing (bronze, Oregon Summer Ale in the English Ale category) and Bend’s brand-new Terranaut (bronze in the coffee beer category for Bucky, a brown ale collaboration with Backporch Coffee Roasters).

Bryon Pyka, Terranaut’s founder who previously worked on 10 Barrel’s research and development team, said, “I think winning right out of the gates demonstrates that Terranaut will be extremely committed to quality and pushing the envelope. It comes at a time when our team has been grinding super hard to get our taproom open, and we really needed a lift. I think it also shows the strength in our community because it was just our third batch of beer, and we never could’ve done it if the Monkless crew didn’t do everything they possibly could to put us in a position to hit the ground running to make great beer and succeed in their former space.”

New at this year’s competition was a slate of cider categories. Five of Oregon’s 38 medals were bestowed upon two cideries: 2 Towns Ciderhouse of Corvallis (which translated into being named GABF’s inaugural Cidermaker of the Year) and Portland-based McMenamins. The gold medal winning Blackberry Cider is currently on tap at Old St. Francis.

Around Oregon, Eugene’s Alesong Brewing and Blending won a gold and a bronze medal, along with being named small brewery of the year (at the 251-500 barrel level), Portland newcomer Grand Fir Brewing (from former 10 Barrel brewmaster Whitney Burnside) garnered three silver medals (and brewery of the year at the 501-1,000 barrel level) and Portland’s beloved Breakside Brewery took home three more to add to its prior 26, making it one of Oregon’s most decorated breweries.

This year’s competition brings Bend-based breweries to a grand total of 104 GABF medals with 125, when including Sunriver, Redmond, and Sisters.

This article appears in Source Weekly October 31, 2024.