Florida Sends Three Breweries to Denver. The Wine Guy Has Notes.

I drink wine. I want that on the record before what follows, because what follows is several hundred words of me being impressed by beer.

The Great American Beer Festival runs Saturday and Sunday in Denver, and for the first time in more than 40 years it's outdoors, per the Brewers Association, at Levitt Pavilion in Ruby Hill Park. The festival's address is 1380 W. Florida Ave.

That's as close as most of this state will get this year. Three Florida breweries are getting a lot closer.

Florida's pour list

I went through the official 2026 pour list booth by booth. Three Florida breweries are on it, all in the South & Southwest section:

• Hopsized Brewing Co., Bonita Springs. Booth F22.
• Ivanhoe Park Brewing Co., Orlando. Booth F23.
• Conscious Brewing, Miami Shores. Booth F16.

Nobody from Sarasota, Manatee or Tampa Bay is pouring this year. Hopsized is the closest, straight down I-75, which makes it our team by the rules of geography and of sports talk radio.

Don't mistake this for a participation trophy. The Brewers Association opened booth registration first to member breweries that had won a GABF or World Beer Cup award in the last five years, and only later to everyone else. Then the booths filled up. The participation page now says registration "has reached capacity" and points latecomers to a waitlist.

Hopsized: best blonde in the world, per the people who decide that

Hopsized is pouring three beers in Denver: Chargie, its blonde ale; a hazy IPA called The Diary of Haze, in its Nectaron version; and Bonita Light, a rice lager.

Chargie is the headliner. In April it won gold at the 2026 World Beer Cup in the Golden or Blonde Ale category, out of 86 entries. Not best in Florida. Best in the category, worldwide. Saint Arnold of Houston took silver.

Per the brewery, every beer is made on a 3.5-barrel electric brewhouse, with a reverse-osmosis water system so each one is built to style. A barrel is 31 gallons, so that's about 108 gallons a batch. In wine terms, this is the garage winery that beat the châteaux. I've read that story a hundred times and it has never once gotten old.

Ivanhoe Park: last year's silver, back for more

Ivanhoe Park is bringing four: Toboggan Blonde Ale, Lager House Bock, The Red and a porter called Tupac ShaPorter. That last one is the best beer name in the South & Southwest section, and I'm not taking questions.

Toboggan took silver at GABF in 2025 in Golden or Blonde Ale, which the brewery celebrated on its own blog. The Lager House side of the operation also took a 2025 World Beer Cup silver for a bock. A brewery in Orlando won a medal for a beer named after a sled. I respect a commitment to the bit.

There are two Orlando locations, per the brewery: the original on Alden Road in the Ivanhoe District, and the Ivanhoe Park Lager House on North Orange Blossom Trail.

Conscious Brewing: Miami Shores, three pours deep

Conscious Brewing pours out of a spot on NE 2nd Avenue in Miami Shores and is bringing three to Denver: a 5.8% hazy IPA, a 7% blonde ale called Sunset on a Saturday, and an Oktoberfest called Above the Crowds.

Their tap list at home runs pilsner, kölsch, dunkel and a raspberry Berliner weisse. Somebody over there likes a clean, patient beer, and anyone who makes a dunkel in Miami is brewing for love, not the weather.

The Florida blonde theory

Count the blondes. Chargie, Toboggan, Sunset on a Saturday. Three of Florida's ten pours in Denver are blonde ales, and two of those three hold major medals in the category.

I don't think that's an accident. A blonde ale is the Pinot Grigio of beer. Everyone assumes it's easy, which is exactly why so few people get it right. There's nothing to hide behind: no barrel, no fruit, no 12% alcohol shouting over the flaws. Just grain, a little hop and whether the brewer flinched.

Florida brewers make it for a customer who is sweating and just got off a boat. They've had a lot of practice.

When the medals drop

Pouring and competing are two different things. The festival is where people drink. The competition is where judges taste blind, style by style, across more than 100 beer and cider categories.

Results come out Sunday, Oct. 11, at 12:15 p.m. Mountain, which is 2:15 p.m. here, live on the Levitt Pavilion stage, with a livestream through the Brewing Network.

GABF doesn't publish who entered, so Florida's full competition roster stays a mystery until the names get read. For scale, last year brought 8,315 entries, 250 judges and 347 medals, per the festival. Florida took five of them:

• BarrieHaus Beer Co., Tampa: gold in Munich-Style Dunkel (The Dark) and bronze in Session Beer (Bub Lite)
• Mathews Brewing Co., Lake Worth: gold in Belgian-Style Witbier (White Goblin)
• Green Bench Brewing Co., St. Petersburg: silver in Brett Beer (Saison de Banc Vert)
• Ivanhoe Park Lager House, Orlando: silver in Golden or Blonde Ale (Toboggan)

That's two Tampa Bay breweries holding three of the state's five. Neither is on this year's pour list, but you don't need a booth to enter the competition. If they shipped beer to the judges, we'll all find out Sunday afternoon. I'll be refreshing.

If you're going

• When: Saturday, Oct. 10, and Sunday, Oct. 11, noon to 4 p.m. Mountain both days.
• Tickets: Saturday is sold out. Sunday was still listed at $66.53 all-in, and the two-day pass at $120.93, when I checked Thursday afternoon on the tickets page. Designated-driver tickets are sold out.
• Where: Levitt Pavilion, 1380 W. Florida Ave., Denver. The main entrance is on the south side, off Jewell Avenue.
• Rules: 21 and up with a photo ID, no re-entry, no backpacks, rain or shine, per the FAQ.

The festival recommends public transit or a rideshare if you're drinking (its shuttle reservations closed Oct. 1), and it runs free water stations. You can bring an empty, clear plastic bottle up to 32 ounces to fill. Take them up on all of it. A couple hundred breweries in four hours isn't a challenge. It's a menu.

The wine part

Here's what I'll admit. What I love about a great wine is that it tastes like somewhere. The slope, the fog, the year it didn't rain.

A blonde ale brewed in Unit 13 on Cockleshell Court in Bonita Springs went up against 85 others from around the world and won. I can't tell you what a good blonde ale tastes like in the language I'd use for a Sancerre. I can tell you that Bonita Springs is on the map now, and that's what the good bottles do too.

Good luck to Hopsized, Ivanhoe Park and Conscious. I'll be home with something white and cold, refreshing a medal list like it's a box score.

— Kevin