Colorado beer dominates GABF awards with 33 medals, three ‘brewery of the year’ accolades

The Great American Beer Festival welcomed drinkers to Denver over the weekend to experience the best in craft beer and cider, and it turns out Colorado residents don’t have to travel far to sip the best suds the industry has to offer.

The festival’s prestigious awards, which took place Saturday, are a testament to that. Colorado breweries and cideries made a phenomenal showing, collecting a total of 40 medals, 19 of which were gold. That is down slightly from last year’s haul of 41 medals, but the straight numbers don’t tell the full story.

In 2025, three different producers were honored as “brewery of the year” in their respective size categories – a huge honor considering more than 1,500 breweries and cidermakers entered this year’s competition. (The Denver Post did not include these accolades in the total medal count.)

“It was a great showing for Colorado’s craft breweries at the GABF awards ceremony. With three brewery of the year awards and 16 gold (beer) medals, Colorado craft breweries continue to prove that they consistently brew some of the best beers in the country,” Shawnee Adelson, executive director of the Colorado Brewer Guild, said in a statement. “The diversity of styles shows that breweries in Colorado can make exceptional beer for all types of palates.”

Westbound & Down Brewing Co. was the biggest company to earn the “brewery of the year” title, in the 5,001 to 15,000-barrel category, and it did so with six medals awarded to its IPAs and lagers. That includes three gold medals, one of which was in the West Coast IPA category, the competition’s second-most competitive. The brewery’s How the West Was Won IPA beat out 299 other entries to take the top of the podium.

As added icing on the cake, the company’s subsidiary Aspen Brewing Co. also garnered gold in the brand-new Mexican-style pale lager category with a beer called Casa Bonita. It doesn’t get more Colorado than that.

Denver’s River North Brewery was named “brewery of the year” in the 1,001 to 2,000-barrel size range after it collected two medals, both of them gold. And Cannonball Creek Brewing Co. in Golden, a mainstay at the GABF awards, took home the title in the 501 to 1,000-barrel size category with three total accolades.

Other notable standouts include Denver Beer Co. winning silver for its non-alcoholic Tangerine Cream ale; Our Mutual Friend Brewing Co. grabbing silver in the American-style IPA category; and Fritz Family Brewers landing atop the podium in the Pro-Am competition for a collaboration with homebrewer Christopher Owens of Longmont. Interesting, the now-defunct Banded Oak Brewing Co. in Denver also took home one bronze medal.

Local cideries Haykin Family Cider and Snow Capped Cider also made a commendable showing with a total of seven medals. They collectively swept the single-varietal cider category with Haykin Family Cider earning gold and bronze and Snow Capped Cider taking home silver.

This year, the Brewers Association gave out awards for the best beer packaging and branding. While Colorado didn’t officially win, we thought River North’s Squirrels Just Want to Have Fun, which won a gold medal in the coffee beer category, deserved an honorable mention.

See the full list of award-winning local beers below. You can find all the competition results at greatamericanbeerfestival.com.

Gold

American-Style Pale Ale – Parallel Pale, Westbound & Down Brewing Co., Lafayette

Belgian-Style or French-Style Specialty Ale – River North White, River North Brewery, Denver

Coffee Beer – Squirrels Just Want to Have Fun, River North Brewery, Denver

Dortmunder or German-Style Oktoberfest – Festbier, Glenwood Canyon Brewing Co., Glenwood Springs

English Ale – Dale’s Pale Ale, Oskar Blues Brewery, Longmont

Experimental, Barrel-Aged or Specialty Cider – Calville Blanc D’Hiver Ice Cider, Haykin Family Cider, Aurora

Fruit Wheat Beer – Key Lime Pie in the Sky, Sandlot Brewery at Coors Field, Denver

German-Style Schwarzbier – Prost Schwarzbier, Prost Brewing Co., Northglenn

Historical Beer – 1554, New Belgium Brewing Co., Fort Collins

Italian-Style Pilsener – Westbound Italian Pils, Westbound & Down Brewing Co., Lafayette

Mexican-Style Pale Lager – Casa Bonita, Aspen Brewing Co., Aspen

Oatmeal Stout – Backside Stout, Steamworks Brewing Co., Durango

Old Ale or Strong Ale or Barley Wine – Breakfast in Barrels, Left Hand Brewing Co., Longmont

Pro-Am Competition – Christopher’s Bier, Fritz Family Brewers and homebrewer Christopher Owens, Longmont

Single Varietal Cider – Mountain Rose, Haykin Family Cider, Aurora

Specialty Non-Alcoholic Beer – NA Tangerine Cream, Denver Beer Co., Denver

Vienna-Style Lager – Prost Vienna Lager, Prost Brewing Co., Northglenn

West Coast IPA – How the West Was Won, Westbound & Down Brewing Co., Idaho Springs

Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Stout – Vladislav, Diebolt Brewing Co., Denver

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Silver

American-Style IPA – Time’s Arrow, Our Mutual Friend Brewing Co., Denver

American-Style Light Lager – Neon Lite, Cerebral Brewing Co., Aurora

American-Style Strong Pale Ale – Mindbender, Cannonball Creek Brewing Co., Golden

Botanical or Spiced Cider – Plum & Lemongrass, Snow Capped Cider, Austin

Honey Beer – Animals Strike Curious Poses, Emporium Brewing Co., Denver

Hoppy Lager – Infinity Pils, Westbound & Down Brewing Co., Lafayette

Session India Pale Ale – Scenic Route, Westbound & Down Brewing Co., Lafayette

Single Varietal Cider – Gravenstien, Snow Capped Cider, Austin

Bronze