Years ago, my husband made a short film about The Great American Beer Festival. I remember getting phone calls from him when he was at the festival and he talked about how it was truly larger than life.

He described the line of people that wrapped around the arena. He was exaggerating a bit but said it was a mile long and then I saw the timelapse and thought, he wasn't exaggerating that much. 

The festival is held in Denver's Colorado Convention Center which is 2,200,000 square feet total with almost 600,000 square feet of event space, according to Wikipedia and the Convention Center website. That's room for a lot of people.

Denver's Colorado Convention Center
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He told me the people who showed up for the festival were some of the most jovial and interesting people he had ever met. He got to taste beers from all over the country. At the time, sour beer was only becoming popular and he got to taste some very unique beers. While the video he made has been lost to the Internet somewhere, I know it was one of the most memorable experiences of his life.

The Great American Beer Festival, now in its 42nd year, has just ended and they've posted the results of the 2024 beer competition winners. Montana had three beers that medaled at this year's festival. MAP Brewing Co. in Bozeman won two awards and Lewis & Clark Brewing Co. in Helena won one award. 

Bronze Medal

  • "Pat's River Beer" from MAP Brewing Co., Bozeman
  • Category: American-Style Lager

Silver Medal

  • "Back Country" Lewis & Clark Brewing Co., Helena
  • English-Style Brown Ale

Gold Medal

  • "Great Wave Sake Lager" MAP Brewing Co., Bozeman
  • Experimental Beer

Congratulations to these Montana breweries!

LOOK: Best Beers From Every State

To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list's average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.

Gallery Credit: Angela Underwood

 

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