How did NC breweries do at the Great American Beer Festival? Six golds sounds pretty good.

One of the largest craft beer competitions in the country found a lot to like in North Carolina.

The Great American Beer Festival, an annual gathering in Colorado of thousands of breweries, awarded nearly a dozen medals to North Carolina breweries, including six golds statewide.

Locally, Crank Arm in Raleigh is the big winner, taking home a gold in the American-Belgo-style ale category for its Whitewall Wheat. The beer is a hoppy wheat beer that drinks like a crisp session IPA, but with little bitterness. Whitewall Wheat previously won a bronze Great American Beer Festival award in 2016.

High Point’s Brown Truck Brewery won a silver in the same American-Belgo-style category for its #4.5 Dry Hopped Saison. On Instagram, Crank Arm suggested a collaboration beers between the winners, which, along with California’s The Bruery, represent a shuffling of the same gold, silver and bronze winners from two years ago.

Triangle breweries appear to have a special talent for these Belgian-style pale ales. Last year Raleigh’s Lynnwood Brewing Concern also won the gold for its Saison Du Bois.

Other Triangle winners this year include a silver for Carolina Brewery’s Copperline Amber Ale in the Ordinary or Special Bitter category and a bronze for Little City’s Mosaic Reprise in the session IPA category.

Most of the North Carolina medals went to breweries outside the Triangle.

Other gold winners include Appalachian Mountain Brewery in Boone as the best American-style Lager; the Pink Passionfruit sour of BearWaters Brewing in Canton for Fruited American-Style Sour Ale; Reserve Doree de Peche from Charlotte’s Wooden Robot for fruited barrel-aged sour; Gordgeous from NoDa Brewing in Charlotte for pumpkin beer; and Civil Rest from Greensboro’s Little Brother Brewing for south German-style Hefeweizen.

Other North Carolina winners include:

Silver

▪ ESB from Hillman Beer in Asheville in the Extra Special Bitter category

▪ The Big Lubelski from Divine Barrel Brewing in Charlotte for historical beer

Bronze

▪ Zest A Peel from Triple C Brewing in Charlotte for English-style summer ale

▪ Brewer’s Day Off from D9 Brewing in Cornelius for gose

This story was originally published September 25, 2018 at 5:21 PM with the headline "How did NC breweries do at the Great American Beer Festival? Six golds sounds pretty good.."