There are many different competitions held in craft beer. But none as important as the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) which is held annually by the Brewers Association. It is arguably the top competition in craft beer across the United States.
Walk into the taproom of any past GABF winner and you are sure to find their medals hung proudly across the bar for all to see. With these awards being so valuable to the brewing community we thought we would dive into the data to see how Pennsylvania has performed as a whole, as well as the individual breweries that have shined in that time.
Below are data points we analyzed from all GABF winners since 2010. (The data below is for all medal winners. You can see a complete breakdown of just the Gold medal GABF winners from Pennsylvania since 2010 here).
Since 2010, only two breweries in Pennsylvania have ever earned double-digit awards at GABF. Both Tröegs Independent Brewing and Iron Hill Brewery are at the top of the list with 11 total medals since 2010.
(Editors note; while Iron Hill is based in Deleware, each location has its own brew system. If beer is submitted from a Pennsylvania location it is awarded to Pennsylvania if it wins. The 11 wins from Iron Hill are specific to those that have come from PA and do not include any wins from Deleware).
For Tröegs the 11 wins consisted of DreamWeaver, Flying Mouflan, Hopback Amber Ale, Sunshine Pils (3 times), and Troegenator (4 times).
Iron Hill was awarded 11 different times, for 11 different beers each from their Lancaster, Chestnut Hill, Media, and Phoenixville locations. With their Media brewery being responsible for 6 of those 11 wins.
The next closest breweries in the medal count were The Church Brew Works and Yards Brewing both with 6 wins each and Neshaminy Creek and Sly Fox with 5 medals each.
One noticeable item from the data we analyzed, was that for as strong of a presence as Victory Brewing has had in the Pennsylvania craft beer landscape they have only medaled one time since 2010. In 2014 they took home a Gold medal for Golden Monkey.
As mentioned above Troegenator by Tröegs Independent Brewing takes home the top spot since 2010 with a total of 4 medals. The next closest beers per total medal count were Russian Imperial Stout (Iron Hill), Croydon Is Burning (Neshaminy Creek), Sunshine Pils (Tröegs), and The Russian (2SP) all winning 3 times during that span.
In addition to the data points above, we also looked at how Pennsylvania has performed since 2010 year over year in total medal count. In this time PA has taken home 108 total medals. As you can see in the chart below the state has dropped off a bit in medal counts in the more recent years.
Many different data points can account for total performance. It is no surprise 2020 was the lowest year for medal count when you take into consideration the start of the Covid Pandemic. Another primary point is how many beers are submitted from the state. Unfortunately, the Brewers Association does not publicize total state submissions per year so it is difficult to know if the years where PA saw a large number of wins was the result of a large number of breweries submitting beer (and vice versa).
The number of medals Pennsylvania has won since 2010 year over year can be seen below (ranked from highest to lowest medal count):
• 2012: 17
• 2017: 16
• 2013: 12
• 2014: 12
• 2010: 9
• 2015: 8
• 2011: 7
• 2016: 7
• 2019: 7
• 2018: 5
• 2021: 5
• 2020: 3
