Taking a pro approach to GABF Pro-Am Competition

There are no bigger bragging rights than those earned at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). Held each year in Denver, Colorado, it is not only the largest annual craft beer event in the U.S., but also includes the country’s biggest, most prestigious professional brewing competition. And for the past 20 years, that high-profile contest has included a pro-am competition, wherein brewing companies team up with amateur brewers to brew homebrew recipes on a commercial scale, then submit those beers for judging. 

Last year, San Diego Brewing Co. (SDBC) and local homebrewer Jeffry Battles made their way to the stage to collect a bronze medal for their pro-am entry, a Bavarian-style hefeweizen dubbed “Battles for Bavaria” (which was part of San Diego Beer News’ Homebrew Summer program). It was the first GABF Pro-Am medal for a San Diegan, making for a thrilling moment, not only for the collaborators, but also members of Battles’ homebrew club. That outfit, QUAFF, knows a thing or two about accolades, having been named Homebrew Club of the Year at the National Homebrew Competition, the recreational brewing equivalent of GABF, 10 times (most recently in 2024), with its members having earned countless medals, and some having been named Homebrewer of the Year. 

QUAFF is a competitive bunch, and Battles’ achievement got them thinking about how to help ensure another GABF Pro-Am Competition medal in 2026. Having longstanding ties with numerous San Diego County breweries, a small team of QUAFFers began reaching out to several of them to see if they would be interested in teaming with the club’s members to brew a trio of beers in different styles, each of which would have its own club-only competition to determine the very best recipes their membership could produce.

“The GABF Pro-Am is the only opportunity for amateur brewers to win a prestigious GABF medal. We decided it would be a fun idea to see if we could bring more GABF medals to San Diego by adding a 2026 QUAFF Club Only Competition component,” says Jeff Case.

Case teamed with fellow QUAFF members Doug Brown and Benjamin Frymark to spearhead the initiative, which consisted of a spring call for entries that garnered 64 entries (an above-average sum for such regional homebrew contests). The beers that were submitted were then presented to the three participating businesses – AleSmith Brewing, Gravity Heights and Home Brew Mart – where panels of those companies’ staffers held internal judging sessions to determine the recipe they wanted to reproduce.

“QUAFF has been an important part of AleSmith’s roots from the beginning. Founders Skip Virgilio and Ted Newcomb came from the local homebrewing community, and current owner Peter Zien and Head Brewer Anthony Chen also have roots with QUAFF,” says Marketing Communications Manager Kristen Ballinger. “The Pro-Am is a great opportunity to celebrate that history while continuing to support San Diego’s homebrewing community.”

AleSmith sought out to find an exceptional recipe for a California Common and got just that from homebrewer Alan Turken, who took inspiration from what is widely considered the standard-bearer for the style, Anchor Steam Beer. Meanwhile, Gravity Heights went the West Coast IPA route, deeming the aforementioned Brown’s “Can’t Be Bought IPA” the best of their respective bunch. Then there was Home Brew Mart, which was more wide open in its search.

“We opened the field to any style – kind of a best-in-show category with the only stipulation being that the ingredients could be sourced from Home Brew Mart,” says owner and Head Brewer Jim Johnson. “As it turned out, our competition received the most entries and judging was a delightful challenge. We selected John Bell’s recipe for a malt-forward English dark mild that drinks light enough to complement our summer weather.”

Though not associated with QUAFF’s initiative, SDBC will again submit a pro-am beer into the competition. This time it will be Uncommon CA Common, the rye-infused California common from homebrewer (and QUAFFer) Bob Mac Kay they scaled up as part of this year’s Homebrew Summer program. As it turns out, having that additional entry may help the county’s chances of consecutive medals, since, due to some mechanical issues at Gravity Heights, there is a chance that their West Coast IPA entry may not make it into this year’s competition, but that does not detract from QUAFFers’ satisfaction regarding their overall initiative and the fact they’ll be putting San Diego’s best foot forward at the GABF Pro-Am.

“There are several breweries that submit GABF Pro-Am entries annually, and many of those are in the Colorado area. Similarly, there are specific brewers in other regions who have submitted entries across multiple years of the competition,” says Case. “But in terms of specifically setting out to build a competition aimed at collaboration between our club members and local breweries, I believe QUAFF may be the first and can guarantee we’re the first to do this with three different breweries in the same GABF year.”

So, will QUAFF’s gambit result in GABF hardware? Only time will tell. 2026 GABF winners will be announced at Denver’s Levitt Pavilion at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, October 11. For now, local enthusiasts can sample the Pro-Am Competition submissions and judge for themselves. “Joker’s Mild” is currently on tap at Home Brew Mart in the Morena District, and “CA Dreamin’” California Common debuted in AleSmith’s Miramar tasting room last week.