With the coronavirus pandemic likely to continue through the year, nobody can be sure that there will be a Great American Beer Festival competition in 2020—though it’s officially scheduled for September 24 to 26 in Denver, Colorado.
If the competition happens, the Brewers Association is expecting fewer entries than last year, when 2,450 brewers entered about 8,600 beers in 107 categories. This year there will be just 90 categories.
“We anticipate total entries will decrease this year,” says Chris Swersey, competition manager for the Brewers Association. “Accordingly, we have decreased the total number of categories by grouping smaller categories from previous years, which will now appear as subcategories of larger category groups.”