Jessica and Erika Jones, of Giant Jones Brewing in Madison, spent a week of October 2024 in Denver as judges and pouring their beers as part of the Great American Beer Festival. Below is their account of the experience.
by Erika Jones
We didn’t win an award this year, but being present and getting to judge as part of the Brewers Association’s Great American Beer Festival (GABF) competition was a reward in itself!
Our first experience with the GABF was in 2008 - which was also the year we started dreaming of opening our own brewery. Back then, we were happily homebrewing in Berkeley, CA and participating in the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) as judges in homebrew competitions.
Our friend, Jim, formerly (and currently) of Boulder, CO had been part of the GABF in its early days in the 1990s, and invited us to serve as stewards, who are volunteers for the competition. Let’s just say, after that experience we were more than hooked!
The behind the scenes of running the largest beer competition are impressive - beers are sent from around the country and collected in a temperature controlled warehouse where they are sorted and organized. Brewers enter their beers in categories by style - over 100 style categories in all. By the time the judging rolls around, there are not only 100’s of judges, but also 100’s of volunteers working to “blind” the beers and serve them to the judges.
We participated on the competition team from 2008-2016, when we formally submitted our articles of incorporation for Giant Jones Brewing. Once you are a professional in the beer industry, you are no longer allowed to work behind the scenes at the competition due to your conflict of interest. There’s a lot of integrity and thoughtfulness that go into pulling off this huge competition.
That first year we volunteered, back in 2008, there were only 75 style categories and 2,900 beers entered - with a total of just over 1,500 breweries in the U.S. This year, there were over 9,000 beers entered in the competition, plus ciders were added for the first time. And currently there are over 9,500 breweries in the U.S.
The brewing industry has clearly evolved in our 16 years being part of it.
We opened our doors in 2018, with the goal of making certified organic beers and demonstrating that it was possible to do things a little bit differently. We’ve done that by always being a no-tip establishment, preferring that our team have a reliable salary; becoming the only certified organic brewery in Wisconsin (and one of just about 14 in the whole country); partnering with local farmers to give our spent grain to as well as source ingredients for our beers; and by being a women and queer led brewery in a historically male-dominated industry.
One of the main reasons we became enamored of the craft beer world was the community that comes together around the beers and breweries, the passion and creativity, and the (more often than not) openness of those in the beer world.
That was true for us as well in our experience in Denver this fall as we made some fast friends with beer-industry colleagues while we tackled judging such challenging categories as Hazy/Juicy IPA, American Fruited Sour, and West Coast IPA! We definitely had some nerves going into our first time judging in this professional setting, but all the other judges and staff were very welcoming and professional - taking the judging job to heart.
One of the great connections we made was getting to judge with Ben, a Brewer at Deschutes Brewing in Bend, OR. We were excited to learn they recently became certified organic so that they can make their organic Kernza beer - which they have both an alcoholic and N/A version. We were excited to get to see the brewers from Deschutes win a GABF gold medal for their N/A Kernza Golden Brew.
Getting to meet other brewers and folks in the beer industry during GABF definitely reinforced our initial feeling in the beer world, that we’re in this together, pushing forward to make better beer - and it was especially great to see other breweries who are organic and working with alternative ingredients!