The Great American Beer Festival kicks off this Thursday, and 
Florida craft breweries will be represented in the greatest number to date.
Twenty breweries from the Sunshine State will be pouring samples on the festival floor, up from 11 last year and seven the year before that. A few, such as Barrel of Monks Brewing and Crooked Can Brewing Co., weren’t even open to the public during last year’s GABF.
Those 20 still represent only a small percentage of the total 750 breweries expected at the fest, but with more than 150 breweries making beer on premise in the state, that number should continue to grow each year.
Hopefully, this will also translate into more medals coming back to the state from the GABF’s annual awards competition, but that’s hard to predict as each beer is judged on its own merits. Florida breweries collected three medals in total last year – one gold and two silver.
Here are the Florida breweries representing in 2015, according to the GABF website.
| Barrel of Monks Brewing | Boca Raton | ||
| Biscayne Bay Brewing Co | Miami | ||
| Brew Hub, LLC | Lakeland | ||
| Cigar City Brewing Co | Tampa | ||
| Coppertail Brewing | Tampa | ||
| Crooked Can Brewing Co | Winter Garden | ||
| Due South Brewing Co | Boynton Beach | ||
| Florida Beer Co | Cape Canaveral | ||
| Funky Buddha Brewery | Fort Lauderdale | ||
| Gravity Brewlab | Miami Beach | ||
| Grayton Beer Co | Santa Rosa Beach | ||
| J Wakefield Brewing | Miami | ||
| JDub’s Brewing Co. | Sarasota | ||
| M.I.A. Brewing Co | Doral | ||
| Motorworks Brewing | Bradenton | ||
| Point Ybel Brewing Company | Fort Myers | ||
| Saltwater Brewery | Delray Beach | ||
| Swamp Head Brewery | Gainesville | ||
| Tomoka Brewing Company | Port Orange | ||
| Wynwood Brewing Company | Miami |
The Great American Beer Festival comprises four sessions at the Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver, one each on Thursday and Friday, and two on Saturday. This year, the festival will have 90,000 more square feet than before and expects more than 60,000 attendees.
For more information, visit the GABF website.
