Area beermakers shine at Great American Beer Festival

BEVERAGES

Highland Park Brewery tops list with 4 gold medals, Brewer of the Year honors

The staff at Highland Park Brewery toasts its success at the recent Great American Beer Festival, including Brewer of the Year honors and four gold medals. From left are Tyler Thurman, Brian Rodriguez, Keenan Grawe, Mikaela Morales, Kevin Limon, Ross Connolly and James Sullivan. David Crane — Staff Photographer

Ambitious Ales, another Long Beach outfit, brought home gold in the juicy/hazy India pale ale category with its Professional Human Being ale. From left are owners Garrett Carroll, Jerome De Leon, Juan Carrillo and Jon Cuthbert. Brittany Murray — Staff Photographer

Kegs of beer are shown at Highland Park Brewery in Los Angeles. David Crane — Staff Photographer

Trademark Brewing’s Kane Christensen, left, Ilana Steffen and Sterling Steffen show their wares. The Long Beach brewery won a Great American Beer Festival gold medal for its West Coast IPA, which beat out 291 other entries. courtesy of Trademark

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By Richard Guzman

riguzman@scng.com

It looks like Southern California is the place to drink for craft beer lovers, because many local breweries won gold medals at the prestigious Great American Beer Festival.

Three local breweries won top prizes at the competition, which took place in Denver this month and included 8,836 beers entered from across the country.

“I didn’t think it was real. I was in shock for a second,” said James Sullivan, marketing director for Highland Park Brewery near Chinatown, which won the Brewery Group Brewery and Brewer of the Year award.

The competition was organized by The Brewers Association, a trade group that represents more than 5,000 U.S. breweries. The festival is one of the most prestigious beer competitions, with brewers comparing it to the Grammys or Oscars of the beer world.

Besides the three top winners, several other area breweries won gold medals in various categories.

“I think the coolest part is to see so many of our friends winning as well, because there’s a lot of good beer out there,” Sullivan said.

striking gold

Highland Park Brewery also tied for the most medals won at the competition with four golds. It matched Apogee Brewing Co. of Grover Beach in San Luis Obispo County, which earned one gold and three bronze medals.

“I was watching from home and when that first gold medal got announced I was super excited, and then later on they just kept coming and it was super awesome and super exciting,” Sullivan said.

Long Beach brewers came in on top as well, with two breweries winning the two most popular categories.

Ambitious Ales brought home the gold in the juicy/hazy India pale ale category for its Professional Human Being ale. With the most entries at 349 beers, hazy IPA was the most popular category. The second most popular, with 292 entries, was the West Coast IPA category, which was won by Trademark Brewing with its Codebreaker beer. And not to be outdone, Highland Park Brewery’s aptly named Competition beer won the gold medal in the third most popular category, American-style IPA, which had 217 entries.

“We were shocked to win just because we were surrounded by so many amazing brewers in that room, especially for such a prestigious category,” said Garrett Carroll, head brewer and co-founder of Ambitious Ales, which opened in Long Beach’s Bixby Knolls neighborhood in 2019.

It was founded by Carroll with friends Jon Cuthbert, Juan Carrillo and Jerome De Leon, who started off as home brewers.

“We’ve been doing this for such a long time all together. It’s a long journey, so to get to this point is a great achievement professionally for the brewery and a great achievement for us as business partners and friends,” Carrillo said.

The beer quickly sold out at the brewery’s taproom after its big win. But the brewers are already working on a new batch, which should be ready Oct. 28.

For Sterling and Ilana Steffen, the spouses behind Trademark Brewing near downtown Long Beach, the win was an unbelievable moment.

“I was watching the broadcast and when I heard it I started screaming and picked up my wife and business partner Ilana and gave her a big squeeze. We scared the hell out of the kids because we were yelling so much,” Sterling Steffen said.

“We’re over the moon. We’re still pinching ourselves. We believe it because we have confidence in our beer, but it’s still a really humbling moment to be recognized by our peers,” said Sterling Steffen, who started brewing at home before meeting his future wife, who also happened to be a beer lover.

Back at Highland Park Brewery, Sullivan said they still feel like they’re floating on cloud nine.

“Everyone has been in a great mood and it’s been real fun the last few days,” he said. But those who want to try the brewery’s winning beers better hurry up because they’re already running low.

“After we won, people came in and were ordering all four of our gold medal beers — that was their way of supporting us — so we’re running low,” Sullivan said.

Other local breweries also won gold medals this year in various categories:

Audio Graph Beer Co., Los Angeles

Everywhere Beer Co., Orange

Far Field Beer Co., Hawthorne

Green Cheek Beer Co., Costa Mesa

Greywolf Brewing, Norco

Riip Beer Co., Huntington Beach

For a full list of winners go to greatamericanbeerfestival.com