LA Brewery Dominates National Beer Competition With 4 Gold Wins; Named Brewery Of The Year

LOS ANGELES, CA — Nine Los Angeles County breweries were among the winners at the recent 42nd annual Great American Beer Festival. Among them were Chinatown's Highland Park Brewery, which took home four gold medals in addition to a Brewery of the Year prize — making it the most decorated brewery of the competition.

The nation’s largest beer festival wrapped its 2024 competition earlier this month, awarding 326 medals to 273 breweries and cideries across the country. Panels of judges evaluated 8,836 beer entries across 102 categories and 170 subcategories.

The festival is held in Denver, Colorado every year, allowing thousands of people to try hundreds of competing beers. This year, the festival hosted hundreds of breweries at the Colorado Convention Center from Oct. 10 through Oct. 12.

Breweries earned accolades across various categories, from American pilsners to sours, coffee beers, non-alcoholic brews and beyond.

Highland Park Brewery had the strongest showing not only among LA County breweries, but also among its nationwide peers. Highland Park, alongside Grover Beach's Apogee Brewing Co., each took home four medals — more than any other competing brewery.

But Highland Park outperformed Apogee in placement: All four of its prizes were gold medals; Apogee won one gold and three bronze.

Highland Park was also named a Brewery of the Year in the Brewery Group Brewery category.

"This is akin to winning Best Picture at the Oscars. ITS UNBELIEVABLE. The awards are amazing, but what’s more profound than that is the culture our team has nurtured at HPB. It is the people at HPB striving to set high standards for themselves and those around them. And it’s not just high standards in our quality of work in making beer, but in the quality of humans we strive to be," the brewery wrote in a social media post.

Overall, the county's breweries performed particularly strong in the crowded India pale ale categories.

Long Beach's Ambitious Ales won the gold in the Juicy/Hazy IPA category. With 349 entries, it was the festival's most entered category.

Trademark Brewing of Long Beach won the top prize in the second-most popular category, West Coast IPA, besting 291 other entries.

And Highland Park came out on top against 216 competitors in the American-Style IPA category, the third-most popular contest.

Here's the complete list of Los Angeles County breweries that won medals at the 2024 Great American Beer Festival:

Gold

• Competition (Highland Park Brewery — Chinatown, Los Angeles) — American-Style IPA
• Timbo (Highland Park Brewery — Chinatown, Los Angeles) American-Style Pale Ale
• Baseball (Highland Park Brewery — Chinatown, Los Angeles) — Contemporary American-Style Lager
• Two Wheeler (Far Field Beer Co., Hawthorne) — Herb and Spice Beer
• DDH Pillow (Highland Park Brewery – Chinatown, Los Angeles) — Juicy or Hazy Imperial IPA
• Professional Human Being (Ambitious Ales, Long Beach) — Juicy or Hazy IPA
• Codebreaker (Trademark Brewing, Long Beach) — West Coast IPA
• Bass Clef (Audio Graph Beer Co., Los Angeles) — Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer

Silver

• A La Playa (Trademark Brewing, Long Beach) — American Fruit Beer
• Apple Pomace Puncheon (Angel City Brewery, Los Angeles) — Belgian-Style Sour Ale
• Brighton ESB (Bravery Brewing Co., Lancaster) — Extra Special Bitter

Bronze

• Plough & Harrow (ISM Brewing, Long Beach) — Classic Saison
• Big Rock Amber Lager (Malibu Brewing Co., Westlake Village) — American Amber Lager

See the full list of winning brews across California here.