Maryland brewers took home five medals from this year’s Great American Beer Festival, including two bronze, two silver and one gold.

DuClaw Brewing won a bronze for Sweet Baby Jesus!, Heavy Seas also took bronze for Gold, Union Craft took home a silver for Old Pro Gose, Gordon Biersch Rockville scored a silver for Belgian IPA, and Gordon Biersch Annapolis took home a gold for Rauchbier.

Overall, the Brewers Association awarded 268 medals in 90 categories at this year’s Great American Beer Festival. This year, total entries reached 5,507, an increase of about 16%. It took 222 judges from 10 countries to choose the winners. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.

For 12 years running now, the most-entered category is and was again American-Style India Pale Ale (IPA), which had 279 different brews vying for a medal. This year’s second-most popular category was the broad Herb and Spice Beer (150 entries), followed by the American-Style Pale Ale (145 entries). Breweries continue to step up their game, which was proven by a four-way tie between 10 Barrel Brewing, Barley Brown’s Brew Pub, Devil’s Backbone, and Left Hand Brewing for most medals won (each taking home three).

Interestingly, there were two categories in which not all medals were awarded: no gold in Golden or Blonde Ale and no silver given in English-Style Brown Ale.

Photo © Brewers Association