The most popular beers of the 2018 Great American Beer Festival

Brewers come to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver hoping to win one of two awards. The first, presented by the judges of the Brewer's Association, is accompanied by a cache for medals and industry. The other, however, can be just as useful.

There is no official prize for the largest beer festival in the country. But when a beer maker captures the interest and passion of the participants, the word spreads quickly and often far beyond the walls of the Denver Convention Center.

This attention is not easy. The 2018 GABF has more than 800 brewers, spilling more than 4,000 beers. The venue is the size of eight football fields and beer lovers fly around like excited and semi-addicted hummingbirds.

There are, of course, breweries that have long queues every year. People line up for a sample of Pliny the Elder, from Russian River Brewing, and just come back to the end of the line to get another one. Stand 3 Floyds often has a line formed before the doors of the show open, while the media and brewers entering the festival look forward to the first casting.

But GABF is also a chance for smaller, promising brewers who might not be known beyond their home country or region to create a national name, addressing different styles or versions designed by experts.

Crowds fill the Denver Convention Center at the 2018 Great American Beer Festival.

Photo © Brewers Association

It is the brewers who are expelled well before the end of the show or those who have longer queues from their stations.

Here is an overview of brewers who have reinforced their icon status (or construction) with craft beer lovers at the 2018 show:

Logic of the bottle – Six minutes after the opening of GABF's doors in 2018, while the vast majority of participants were still online to enter, the queue for Bottle Logic was 40 people. When the brewery tapped The Lost Colony, a rare pecan bearer aged with rum and bourbon casks, the line exploded to more than 250 people. The brewer from Anaheim, Calif., Delights in a variety of beers, along with a blueberry IPA and fog from New England, which is also proving to be very popular with beer lovers.

Weldwerks Last year, the brewer from Greely, Co. gave impetus to many speed cameras. He has since become the most prominent brewer in Colorado. This is spreading rapidly at GABF as fans line up for beers like Juicy Bits and Blackberry Cobler Berliner Weiss.

Brasserie Destihl – Word began to spread quickly about this Normal, It. the brewer's offers this year. The Pina Colada Gose, a fruity take on a sour beer, is the most popular.

Revolution Brewing Co – Chicago's largest artisanal brewer is quickly building a national reputation as people prepare for his anti-hero IPA. (The check-ins for the GAB Untappd beer ranking app rank it among the 20 most popular beers of the festival to date.)

Spice trade – Part of the walking circulation for this brewer Arvada, Co. comes from his most popular coulees seem to be the Pumpkin Spice Latte (yes, there's a beer version of that too) and Scarlet Giant, a brewed gose with wild yeast grown from a hibiscus flower from the Denver Botanical Gardens.

Great Notion – The lines for this Portland, Gold. Last year, the brewers were long this year, they are somehow longer. The demand was so good for beers like Ripe IPA (a New England style) and Blueberry Muffin (a tasty, sour drink, as its namesake) that all casks were expelled before the series reached its point culminating on Thursday. This request is likely to increase in the coming days.