Florida Took Home Five GABF Medals. Four Are Gold.

Quick note before we start: I'm filling in while Kevin is in the Douro Valley, presumably standing in a vineyard saying "terroir" to people who already know. He left me his beer homework. I did it.

Last week Kevin previewed the three Florida breweries pouring in Denver. The judges announced the medals Sunday afternoon, and I went through the official 2026 winners list from the Brewers Association, all 336 medals, filtered down to the state of Florida.

Florida won five. Four of them are gold.

The Florida medal list

• Gold, American Cream Ale: Padron, The Tank Brewing Co., Miami
• Gold, American Sour Ale: Guavacation, Ivanhoe Park Brewing Company, Orlando
• Gold, American-Style Light Lager: Beer Project Light, New York Beer Project, Winter Garden
• Gold, Irish-Style Red Ale: Red Right Return, Marker 48 Brewing, Brooksville
• Bronze, Pumpkin Beer: Drunken Punkin, New York Beer Project, Winter Garden

Same count as last year, when Florida also took five. Last year was two golds. This year is four. That's not a rounding error, that's a better year.

Guavacation, the one I'd drive for

Ivanhoe Park was one of the three Florida breweries actually pouring at the festival, and Kevin had his eye on Toboggan, the blonde ale that took silver last year. Toboggan didn't place this time. Instead the brewery won gold with a guava sour.

Somebody in Orlando put guava in a sour, shipped it to Denver, and the judges handed it a gold medal. That's the most Florida sentence I'll write all year. Guava is the fruit of pastelitos at 7 a.m. and the paste in the back of every Cuban bakery case. Of course it works in a tart beer. I want it next to a ham croqueta, immediately.

Padron, Miami's cream ale

The Tank in Miami took gold in American Cream Ale with a beer called Padron. A cream ale is the beer you hand someone after they've been doing yard work in August. Winning gold in it means nothing was hiding. Miami makes a lot of loud things. This one won by being quiet and clean.

New York Beer Project, two medals from Winter Garden

New York Beer Project has a spot in Winter Garden, out west of Orlando, and that location is the one on the list. It took gold for Beer Project Light in American-Style Light Lager and bronze for Drunken Punkin in Pumpkin Beer.

Light lager is the category everybody pretends to be above and then orders four of at a boat ramp. Two medals in two very different styles is a good weekend.

Marker 48, Brooksville's red

Marker 48 in Brooksville, up in Hernando County, took gold in Irish-Style Red Ale for Red Right Return. If you've driven the Suncoast Parkway past Spring Hill and wondered what's out there, the answer is a gold-medal red ale. The name is a boating rule, "red, right, returning," for keeping the red markers on your right as you come back into port. A brewery named after a channel marker winning with a beer named after a channel rule is very on-brand for a state that is mostly coastline.

Who didn't medal this time

Hopsized in Bonita Springs, the closest brewery to us on the pour list, didn't place this year. Neither did Conscious Brewing from Miami Shores. That's no knock. Hopsized's Chargie is still the reigning World Beer Cup gold medalist in Golden or Blonde Ale, which is a sentence most breweries would frame. Both of them got into a festival that filled to capacity, poured all weekend and represented the state, and I'd happily drink either lineup this Saturday.

Last year's Tampa Bay medalists, BarrieHaus and Green Bench, aren't on the 2026 list either, and Sarasota and Manatee are still waiting on their first local name. Somebody around here, please brew something in a dunkel or a cream ale and mail it to Denver next year. We'll cheer.

The party, from the people in the room

The good folks at American Craft Beer shared the winners list right after the ceremony with exactly the right energy:

The 2026 Great American Beer Festival Competition Winners #GABF @BrewersAssoc Congratulations to all of this year's big winners…Live long and prosper!

— American Craft Beer (@AmericaCrftBeer) See it on X

Go drink a medal

Orlando, Winter Garden and Brooksville are all a day trip from here, and Miami is a long weekend. You can make a whole Florida medal tour out of this, as long as someone else drives. Guavacation first. I'll be in the passenger seat with a croqueta.

Congratulations to The Tank, Ivanhoe Park, New York Beer Project and Marker 48. Kevin, I'll leave this on your desk for November.

— Marina