Greetings, beer lovers! ‘Tis (Black) Friday, and after a long hiatus (not that anyone noticed or cared), ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your guest FNBB blogger tonight, with esquimaux taking a very well-earned Friday night off from FNBB duties for the holiday weekend. The starting point for tonight’s edition is the Great American Beer Festival, the 2025 edition (well, duh), which took place last month in Denver. The 2025 list of Festival winners is at this link (pdf version here for those who like pdf versions). Here’s a parsing of the 344 winners by state in descending order, with no surprise for the top winner:
CA: 79
CO: 39
OR: 29
WA: 23
OH, TX: 21
VA: 11 NC: 8
AZ, MI, MO, TN, UT: 7
GA, IN, OK, PA: 6
FL, MD, NV, WI: 5
IL, NY: 4
MN, MT, NJ: 3
KS, ME, NE: 2
AK, CT, IA, LA, MA, MS, NH, NM, SC, SD, WV: 1
States which didn’t have any winners: AL, AR, DE, HI, ID, KY, ND, RI, VT, WY (DC didn’t place either)
Going local, Jordan Palmer at St. Louis Magazine had this article on the two STL-based craft breweries which had winning entries in this year’s GABF:
* Side Project Brewing (Maplewood, MO): ‘Marble Lions’ (in the “Dessert or Pastry Stout” category; interestingly, I didn’t see this flavor listed on Side Project Brewing’s website as of this time)
* Narrow Gauge Brewing Company (Florissant, MO): ‘King Fallen Flag’ (in the “Juicy or Imperial India Pale Ale” category)
If you have absolutely nothing else to watch online, the video of this year’s GABF awards ceremony is available on YT (no, 3CM the loser didn’t watch it. He’s simply putting it here for the record, also because he’s not smart enough to find an appropriate music video 😊 ):
Actually, on a second try to find a music video for this FNBB, how about this one? It does involve the Colorado Symphony, although I’ve no idea who Lettuce is:
All this aside, the featured selection chez 3CM this evening is a Squatters Hop Rising Double IPA (even if the color of the can in my pic doesn’t match the color on the brewery’s website). It’s a 9% IPA, so it packs a wallop on the ethanolic side. I even tried scarfing some of the foam, in the spirit of my last FNBB 10 months (!) ago, and even the foam packs a wallop. Even at that high %, and with strong flavor to match, it still goes down pretty smoothly. I clearly need to have sufficient food to go with this beer, along with observing ‘the 15-minute rule’ ;) . But even now, having scarfed some food, this beer has quite the punch.
With that, time to turn it over to you folks. What are you imbibing this evening? Anyone brewing their own? Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving, and cheers :) .
