2 Minnesota Brewpubs Bring Home Hardware at the 2026 Great American Beer Festival

The winners of the 2026 Great American Beer Festival were announced in Denver, Colorado, on Sunday, October 11th.  While there were over 7,000 entries made up of beer, cider, and hop waters, only 336 medals were given out.  The competition for winners was fierce and Minnesota breweries netted 2 of those awards.  Minneapolis Town Hall Brewery won gold in the mixed culture brett beer category with their Orchard Pear and Northbound Smokehouse & Brewpub won silver for their eisbock in the German strong beer category.  While the number of awards won might further the myth that Minnesota is flyover country when it comes to beer, the two breweries who came away with hardware are no strangers to the GABF awards dais.

Town Hall Brewery Orchard Pear Wins Gold

With this gold medal, that gives Town Hall Brewery an eye-popping 15 total GABF medals according to the Great American Beer Festival database.  Their first was back in 2000.  In fact, when Czar Jack won gold in 2001, they won in the “experimental beer” category.  Yes, I know, if you are reading this and you have a Snapchat and say “6/7” all the time, there was a time when not everyone with opposable thumbs put their beer into whiskey barrels. In fact, Czar Jack was kind of a unicorn of a beer back then. The Brewers Associated realized that this was something that other breweries were going to be doing more and more of. The next year, thanks to Town Hall Brewery, there was a wood-aged beer category.  I’ll drink to that kind of innovation.

That brings us to this year’s gold medal-winning Orchard Pear.  This is a liquid representation of how to create something greater than the sum of its parts.  Orchard Pear is a balanced and effervescent marvel. From fruit, a base beer, wood, brettanomyces, and time, how it became what it is is perhaps a gift from all the beer gods and goddesses in the world. The confluence between the sweetness from the fruit and the acidity from the Brett is flawless.

There are some beers that have a steep learning curve simply when it comes to following a recipe. Most beers allow for the brewer to control most of the variables involved when it comes to following a recipe.  When a brewer puts beer in a barrel, there are a myriad of things that have to go right for it to come out as something that checks the boxes of quality and taste. Kudos to Town Hall Brewery’s Derek Brown for trusting his years of experience and technical brewing acumen for getting this beer to the point where it could become a gold medal winning treat.

Northbound Smokehouse & Brewpub Make It Three Years In A Row

Eisbock is a beer that a craft beer drinker needs to search far and wide to find.  In Minnesota, we are lucky that Northbound Smokehouse & Brewpub allows themselves to delve into the niche, historic beer styles to bring us such a malty treat.  While the legendary eisbock has been an institution at Northbound for a long time.  It only became a household name in 2024 when it won gold at Great American Beer Festival for the first time. Since then, it has won another gold in 2025, and silver in 2026. Northbound winning 3 medals in 3 years is a feat that rarely happens at Great American Beer Festival.

A Beer Style Born Out Of A Whoopsie

What is an Eisbock?  Well, it is a beer that gets an elevated ABV from delicately freezing it.  This allows for the brewer to remove some of the frozen water from the beer to increase the alcohol.  This beer style’s origin story is probably one of the world’s best “happy little accidents” of all time.  Here is the section from Garret Oliver’s Oxford Companion to Beer:

“The style seems to have originated in Franconia, reputedly in Kulmback.  The local Reichelbräu brewery (now part of Kumbacker AG) claims that an apprentice was ordered to move a barrel containing bock beer into warmer parts of the brewery on an especially cold winter evening in 1890.  He failed to do so and by the next morning much of the beer was frozen.  The ice inside the barrel had extended to a degree where the wooden staves eventually broke.  When the head brewer returned to work, he found the barrel busted and a block of ice encapsuling a small amount of dark liquid.  This liquid proved to be far tastier than expected: the eisbock had been invented by pure coincidence” (Oliver 321).

I am sure that there is a certain amount of massaging the truth of what actually happened over the years, but I do love the tale.  The beer that Andy Rosenthal brews at Northbound Smokehouse & Brewpub is a malt-lover’s dream.  It is packed with a depth of dark fruit, a hint of chocolate, and subtle notes of leather and caramel.  This beer drinks smooth and luxurious and doesn’t even hint at being 16% ABV. 

It’s worth noting that the recipe for the Eisbock uses 100% Weyermann specialty malts. Some might even say that the Weyermann Specialty Malts in this beer are the wagyu beef of beer ingredients. If you missed the special tapping of the small amount of eisbock that Northbound tapped on Saturday, October 24th, you need to keep your eyes out for their Eisbock Poking Event in early January.

The Minnesota breweries that won Great American Beer Festival awards this year have deep roots in the Minnesota craft beer scene.  Minneapolis Town Hall Brewery just celebrated their 29th anniversary last week. Northbound Smokehouse & Brewpub had their 14th anniversary earlier in the Fall.  With a collective 43 years of experience serving fantastic beers and delicious food, you probably should plan a visit and see for yourself why they have stood the test of time.  Cheers!

Source: Oliver, Garrett, editor. The Oxford Companion to Beer. Oxford University Press, 2012.

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