Pennsylvania took home 12 medals at the 2013 Great American Beer Festival competition, well below California’s blitz of 52 but not bad at all. Neshaminy Creek was a big winner, garnering gold for Churchville Lager, and Troegs also scored a top nod - for Troegenator Double Bock - in addition to a bronze for Sunshine Pils.

Yards Brewing copped two medals this year, a silver for English ale Brawler and bronze for Poor Richard’s Tavern Spruce, which competed in the relatively unorthodox category dubbed “Indigenous Beer.” Sly Fox went silver with Grisette and bronze with Oktoberfest and Iron Hill Media took a bronze for Russian Imperial Stout. New Jersey’s Flying Fish notched a silver for OktoberFish.

Altogether, the Brewers Association awarded 252 medals in 84 categories during the biggest commercial beer competition in the world. The winners were chosen by 201 judges, who sipped from 8 AM through dusk for several days to make their way through 4,809 entries.

Following the recent trend, the most-entered category this year was American-Style India Pale Ale (IPA), which had 252 different brews fighting for a medal. Second-most popular was Imperial IPA (also known as double IPA; 149 entries) and then the relatively broad category called Herb and Spice Beer (134 entries).

The surging growth of the craft beer industry was reflected in the competition, as 230 breweries that entered beer were first-timers; 24 of them won awards. Colorado’s Left Hand Brewing tied for the most gold medals with California’s Firestone Walker (each won three). Interestingly, there were two categories in which no gold medal was awarded: American-Style or International-Style Pilsener and Imperial Red Ale.

Photos by Danya Henninger