Pro-Am Competition

Great American Beer Festival Pro-Am Competition

The Great American Beer Festival Pro-Am (GABF Pro-Am) competition is an opportunity for commercial breweries to team up with homebrewers to vie for top honors.

---

How it Works

Brewers Association member breweries are eligible to submit one entry into the GABF Pro-Am competition. Entries must be based on award-winning homebrew recipes that have won an award in competition. Pro-Am competition judges come from the same professional panel of world-class judges that evaluate all the beers at the Great American Beer Festival competition. However, the Pro-Am competition is separate from the GABF competition, and therefore the Pro-Am medals do not count toward GABF Brewery and Brewer of the Year awards.

Rules & Regulations for Pro-Am Competition

The Brewers Association is proud to present the 20th Annual GABF Pro-Am Competition of the Great American Beer Festival. Please read all the Rules & Regulations before entering the GABF Pro-Am Competition.

Breweries may determine the homebrew recipes they scale up in one of three ways:

1. Select an award-winning homebrew from an American Homebrewers Association (AHA)/Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP)-sanctioned homebrew competition.
2. Select an entry from your own brewery-run and/or AHA/BJCP-sanctioned competition.
3. Partner with a local homebrew club to organize an AHA/BJCP-sanctioned competition and select an entry from that competition.

_{*Some exceptions to the entry timeframe may be made in the case of beers requiring extended aging. The nature of the competition is entirely up to the brewery and must be timed to give the brewery adequate time to brew the beer to be ready for entry to the competition. The brewery may choose to work with an existing competition or create their own. Breweries may restrict the styles eligible for Pro-Am entry selection to styles they can reasonably brew. For example, breweries may choose not to accept recipes for fruit beers, sour beers, or beer requiring extended aging, etc. Breweries brew the winning beer from the recipe submitted by the winning homebrewer.}

Eligibility & Info

• Entry Cap: 54 entries (First come, First Served)
• Fee: $185 per entry
• All GABF eligibility rules apply to Pro-Am entries in addition to the following Pro-Am specific elements listed below
• Brewery Eligibility for Entry:
  • Breweries must have at least one other brand in the GABF competition to be eligible to compete in the Pro-Am Competition. Breweries may not enter ONLY the Pro-Am Competition.
  • All professional brewery entrants must be members of the Brewers Association
• Beer Eligibility:
  • Limited modifications of the recipe are allowed to accommodate the scale of commercial brewing and ingredients available to the brewery.
• Judging Info: GABF Pro-Am entries compete in best-of-show-style judging using the GABF Style Guidelines. Entering brewers must provide the appropriate GABF category name and number along with any requested supplemental information for the entry to be judged correctly. Entries that do not include this information will not be accepted.
  • Judges will determine the top three entries in the GABF Pro-Am Competition, which are awarded Gold, Silver, and Bronze GABF Pro-Am Competition medals during the GABF awards ceremony.
  • Medals are issued to both the winning brewery and the winning homebrewer.
  • The Pro-Am medals do not count towards Brewery of the Year awards, and therefore, are not counted for Brewery of the Year points.
• Licensing Agreement: All entrants, both professional and amateur brewers, must sign a Licensing Agreement prior to the submission of entries to the GABF. The Licensing Agreement limits and protects the way the GABF trademark is used.

Questions?

Email the GABF events team.

---

American Homebrewers Association