Beer produced by Salt Lake City’s Red Rock Brewing and Squatters earned gold medals during the 2017 Great American Beer Festival competition this past weekend in Denver.
Red Rock’s Zwickelbier took first place — among 54 entries — in the Kellerbier or Zwickelbier category.
Squatters Hell’s Keep, produced by the Utah Brewers Cooperative, also earned top honors, beating 63 other entries in the Belgian-Style Blonde Ale or Pale Ale.
Those medals were among 293 handed out during a ceremony in the Colorado Convention Center.
The competition, sponsored by the Brewer Association, is largest commercial beer competition in the United States. In all, there were 98 beer categories covering 161 styles and subcategories.
As the number of independent brewers continues to increase across the nation, the GABF competition gets tougher. This year there were 7,923 entries from 2,217 breweries in 50 states plus Washington, D.C. Those are 15 percent and 24 percent increases, respectively, from 2016.
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