Its that time of the year again! And of course its snowing to boot! The Pennsylvania Farm Show is in full swing, and they’ve just released the list of winners of the Beer competitions for this year. On the day we got back from Vegas, January 3rd, the 109th Annual Pennsylvania Farm Show kicked off. Today, on January 6th, they’ve announced the winners. So lets get to it!

Pennsylvania Best in Beer Farm Show Competition Awards and Winners

The 2025 Pennsylvania Farm Show logo

The 109th Annual Pennsylvania Farm Show kicked off on January 3rd, 2025. The competition for the Best in Beer category has been an intense competition in past years. You can see the results here:

• Best in Beer Awards (2023)
• Best in Beer Stats (2023)
• Best in Beer Awards (2024)

As with last year, John Stemler was the head judge of the brewing competition. Beers had to be submitted and received no later than November 11th 2024 (Veteran’s Day / Scarlet’s birthday). The full list of rules and regulations can be found here at the Farm Show’s website for Department 34 (beer): 2025 PA Farm Show – Department 34 Beer Contest.

Pennsylvania’s State Fair showcases top
competitors from 108 county and local fairs, and the
diversity and quality of Pennsylvania’s agriculture
industry, the innovative people who make it thrive,
and the faces of our proud past and promising
future. The show offers visitors a peek into the
industry that supports 593,000 Pennsylvania jobs
and contributes $132.5 billion to Pennsylvania’s
economy every year. See you at the PA Farm Show!

– 2025 PA Farm Show – Department 34 Beer Contest

Judging for the competition was from Friday December 6th until Sunday December 8th, 2024. They judged the following styles:

1. Standard American Beer
2. International Lager
3. Czech Lager
4. Pale Malty European Lager
5. Pale Bitter European Beer
6. Amber Malty European Lager
7. Amber Bitter European Beer
8. Dark European Lager
9. Strong European Beer
10. German Wheat Beer
11. British Bitter
12. Pale Commonwealth Beer
13. Brown British Beer
14. Scottish Ale
15. Irish Beer
16. Dark British Beer
17. Strong British Ale
18. Pale American Ale
19. Amber and Brown American Beer
20. American Porter and Stout
21. IPA
22. Strong American Ale
23. European Sour Ale
24. Belgian Ale
25. Strong Belgian Ale
26. Monastic Ale
27. Historical Beer
28. American Wild Ale
29. Fruit Beer
30. Spiced Beer
31. Alternative Fermentables Beer
32. Smoked Beer
33. Wood Beer
34. Specialty Beer

Now let’s get to the winners!

Best in Beer Winners – 2025

First, you can see the full list of entries and winners directly from the Farm Show’s site here: 2025 PA Farm Show – Department 34 Beer Contest. The PDF page is a bit confusing and shows all entries, how many points they received, if they are PA Preferred, and if they won a medal. No mention of categories or anything.

I will help you out here and break down the categories (best that I can) and show who won what place, and will list if it’s PA Preferred (more on what that is afterwards).

For a full list of all Farm Show competitions, and winners, you can view their Results page here: 109th Annual Farm Show Results.

For More of our Award Articles

Looking for more articles about breweries and brewers winning awards? Check these out:

• 2023 Great American Beer Festival (GABF) Winners: Pennsylvania
• 2022 Great American Beer Festival (GABF) Winners: Pennsylvania
• 2021 Great American Beer Festival: Pennsylvania Award Winners
• 2020 Great American Beer Festival: Pennsylvania Award Winners
• 2019 Great American Beer Festival: Pennsylvania Award Winners
• 2020 North American Guild of Beer Writers Awards
• 2021 North American Guild of Beer Writers Awards
• 2022 NAGBW Awards
• 2023 North American Guild of Beer Writers (NAGBW) Awards
• 2024 North American Guild of Beer Writers (NAGBW) Awards
• Farm Show Beer Competition – Best in Beer (2023) – Stats
• Best in Beer – Farm Show Awards (2024)
• Best in Beer – Farm Show Awards (2023)
• Allusion Brewing Company Wins Two Top Awards (2022)
• Allusion Brewing Wins Three Awards at the 2023 CBMAs
• The Battle of the Breweries (2021) Winner Is….
• The Battle of the Breweries (2022) Winner Is….
• The Battle of the Breweries (2023) Winner Is….
• World Beer Cup 2023 Winners – Delaware
• World Beer Cup 2023 Winners – Pennsylvania
• World Beer Cup 2023 Winners – Maryland
• Top 50 Craft Brewing Companies in the United States (2023)
• Top 50 Overall Brewing Companies (2023)
• Best in Beer – Farm Show Awards (2025)

Thank You For Reading

If you like this article, please check out our other many articles, including news, beer reviews, travelogues, maps, and much much more. We greatly appreciate everyone visiting the site!

Cheers.

Thanks again for reading everyone. Take some time to check out the site, we greatly appreciate it. We have affiliates and sponsors with Pretzels.com and Beer Drop.com, which can save you money on their products if you are interested. Check out our articles on them. Make sure to check out our beer reviews, brewery reviews, Amy’s weekly column, book reviews, hike reviews, and so much more.

As always, thank you everyone for reading! Leave your likes, comments, suggestions, questions, etc, in the comments section. Or use the Feedback – Contact Us – page, and we’ll get right back to you! You can also reach out to us at our direct e-mail address: thebeerthrillers@gmail.com

Thank you for visiting our blog. Please make sure to follow, bookmark, subscribe, and make sure to comment and leave feedback and like the blog posts you read. It will help us to better tailor the blog to you, the readers, likes and make this a better blog for everyone.

We are working on a massive project here at The Beer Thrillers. We are creating a map of all of the breweries across the United States. State by state we are adding maps of all of the different states with every brewery in each state. (We will eventually get to the US Territories, as well as the Canadian Provinces, and possibly more countries; as well as doing some fun maps like a map of all the breweries we’ve been to, and other fun maps.) You can find the brewery maps here:

• MAPS OF BREWERIES

We are also working on a project of creating printable and downloadable PDFs and resources to be able to check and keep track of all of the breweries you’ve been to. So stay tuned for that project once we are finished with the Brewery Maps of the US States.

You can check out our different directories here: Beer Reviews, Hike Reviews, Book Reviews, Brewery News, Brewery Openings, Brewer Interviews, and Travelogues.

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Facebook Group, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. As well as our brand new Tumblr page. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We are also now on BlueSky as well, so make sure to check us out there also. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

You can now find us on our Discord Server here: The Beer Thrillers (Discord Server). We’ve also joined LinkTree to keep track of all of our social media pages, as well as hot new articles we’ve written.

The Beer Thrillers on LinkTree can be found here: The Beer Thrillers LinkTree.

We have partnered with an affiliateship with Beer Drop.com. You can check out that partnership and receive great discounts, coupons, and more here: Beer Drop. Going here and logging in and ordering will help you receive your discounts and coupons as well as help support our page. Thank you for helping to support The Beer Thrillers and to help us maintain the site and blog and to keep it running.

The Beer Thrillers are a blog that prides itself on writing beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, news (especially local to the Central PA brewery scene), as well as covering other topics of our interests – such as hiking, literature and books, board games, and video games which we sometimes stream with our friends over at Knights of Nostalgia. We are currently listed as #5 on FeedSpot’s “Top 100 Beer Blogs” and #9 on FeedSpot’s “Top 40 Pennsylvania Blogs”. (As of August 2024.) Thank you for reading our site today, please subscribe, follow, and bookmark. Please reach out to us if you are interested in working together. If you would like to donate to the blog you can here: Donate to The Beer Thrillers. Thank you!

You can also check out our partnership and affiliation with Pretzels.com, where ordering pretzels and using our affiliate code – AFFILIATE CODE IS THEBEERTHRILLERS20 – will help you get wonderful pretzels and help us maintain and keep this blog running. Thank you!

If you would like to reach out to us for product reviews, beer reviews, press release writing, and other media – please contact us at thebeerthrillers@gmail.com. Thank you.

(Thank you for reading. The opinions, thoughts, and expressions of each article posted on The Beer Thrillers represents the author of the content and only themselves. It does not express the opinions, beliefs, or ideas held by The Beer Thrillers or any company in which the author themselves work for. Each piece of written content is written by the creator(s) listed in the authorial section on each article unless otherwise noted. Their opinions, comments, and words on screen do not represent any company in which they work for and / or are affiliated with or any non – profits that they contribute to. Thank you.)

On Friday – January 5th, 2023 – the 108th Annual Pennsylvania Farm Show kicked off at the (historic?) Farm Show Arena / Expo Hall / Building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The annual event brings people from all across the states in various agricultural industries to Harrisburg; to showcase, to compete, to interact, intermingle, and have a good time.

It also usually brings bad weather as well. As was apparent Saturday (January 6th) when we did our podcast with Lew Bryson for his “Seen Through a Glass“.

Friday was primarily just the food market and a few other events. The milkshakes were out, the talk of all the land, as always, and there was also free parking Friday so the food court was absolutely jammed pack. There was also a rodeo hosted on Friday.

Today – Tuesday, January 9th, they announced the winners of the Beer Competitions.

Farm Show – Best of Beer Awards

The Farm Show introduced the Best of Craft Beer Awards in 2019. This makes it the fourth year of them doing the awards (the awards went virtual in 2020).

You can read the rules for entry here: Department 34 – Beer Awards Rules and Entry Information.

Over the years there has been numerous winners from across the state. In this year’s competition, 44 breweries across 26 Pennsylvania counties submitted 255 beers to be judged, with 32 different breweries placing in the top 3 of these categories.

Let’s get to this year’s winners:

Best in Beer Winners – 2024

First, you can see the full list of entries and winners directly from the Farm Show’s site here: Department 34 – Craft Beer Entries (PDF). The PDF page is a bit confusing and shows all entries, how many points they received, if they are PA Preferred, and if they won a medal. No mention of categories or anything.

I will help you out here and break down the categories (best that I can) and show who won what place, and will list if it’s PA Preferred (more on what that is afterwards).

For a full list of all Farm Show competitions, and winners, you can view their Results page here: 108th Annual Farm Show Results.

PA Preferred

PA Preferred is a big deal, but even a bigger deal around Farm Show time. The breweries and brewers who do it make a big mention of it and a big “to – do” about it. The point of it is to use all Pennsylvania products, from the malt and grain to the hops and to the water and everything else in between. There is becoming more and more of a bigger push to go “all Pennsylvanian” with breweries. Troegs Brewing, Wallenpaupack Brewing, Logyard Brewing, Boneshire Brew Works, Hemauer Brewing, and several others are striving to make more and more of their beers this way.

For More Information on the Farm Show

• Farm Show Documents: Department 34 – Beer Awards
• Farm Show Documents: Department 34 – Entry Rules
• Farm Show Schedule

For More of our Award Articles

Looking for more articles about breweries and brewers winning awards? Check these out:

• 2023 Great American Beer Festival (GABF) Winners: Pennsylvania
• 2022 Great American Beer Festival (GABF) Winners: Pennsylvania
• 2021 Great American Beer Festival: Pennsylvania Award Winners
• 2020 Great American Beer Festival: Pennsylvania Award Winners
• 2019 Great American Beer Festival: Pennsylvania Award Winners
• 2020 North American Guild of Beer Writers Awards
• 2021 North American Guild of Beer Writers Awards
• 2022 NAGBW Awards
• 2023 North American Guild of Beer Writers (NAGBW) Awards
• Farm Show Beer Competition – Best in Beer (2023) – Stats
• Best in Beer – Farm Show Awards (2023)
• Allusion Brewing Company Wins Two Top Awards (2022)
• Allusion Brewing Wins Three Awards at the 2023 CBMAs
• The Battle of the Breweries (2021) Winner Is….
• The Battle of the Breweries (2022) Winner Is….
• The Battle of the Breweries (2023) Winner Is….
• World Beer Cup 2023 Winners – Delaware
• World Beer Cup 2023 Winners – Pennsylvania
• World Beer Cup 2023 Winners – Maryland
• Top 50 Craft Brewing Companies in the United States (2023)
• Top 50 Overall Brewing Companies (2023)

Thank You For Reading

If you like this article, please check out our other many articles, including news, beer reviews, travelogues, maps, and much much more. We greatly appreciate everyone visiting the site!

Cheers.

Thanks again for reading everyone. Take some time to check out the site, we greatly appreciate it. We have affiliates and sponsors with Pretzels.com and Beer Drop.com, which can save you money on their products if you are interested. Check out our articles on them. Make sure to check out our beer reviews, brewery reviews, Amy’s weekly column, book reviews, hike reviews, and so much more.

As always, thank you everyone for reading! Leave your likes, comments, suggestions, questions, etc, in the comments section. Or use the Feedback – Contact Us – page, and we’ll get right back to you! You can also reach out to us at our direct e-mail address: thebeerthrillers@gmail.com

Thank you for visiting our blog. Please make sure to follow, bookmark, subscribe, and make sure to comment and leave feedback and like the blog posts you read. It will help us to better tailor the blog to you, the readers, likes and make this a better blog for everyone.

We are working on a massive project here at The Beer Thrillers. We are creating a map of all of the breweries across the United States. State by state we are adding maps of all of the different states with every brewery in each state. (We will eventually get to the US Territories, as well as the Canadian Provinces, and possibly more countries; as well as doing some fun maps like a map of all the breweries we’ve been to, and other fun maps.) You can find the brewery maps here:

• MAPS OF BREWERIES

We are also working on a project of creating printable and downloadable PDFs and resources to be able to check and keep track of all of the breweries you’ve been to. So stay tuned for that project once we are finished with the Brewery Maps of the US States.

You can check out our different directories here: Beer Reviews, Hike Reviews, Book Reviews, Brewery News, Brewery Openings, Brewer Interviews, and Travelogues.

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Facebook Group, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. As well as our brand new Tumblr page. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

You can now find us on our Discord Server here: The Beer Thrillers (Discord Server). We’ve also joined LinkTree to keep track of all of our social media pages, as well as hot new articles we’ve written.

The Beer Thrillers on LinkTree can be found here: The Beer Thrillers LinkTree.

We have partnered with an affiliateship with Beer Drop.com. You can check out that partnership and receive great discounts, coupons, and more here: Beer Drop. Going here and logging in and ordering will help you receive your discounts and coupons as well as help support our page. Thank you for helping to support The Beer Thrillers and to help us maintain the site and blog and to keep it running.

The Beer Thrillers are a blog that prides itself on writing beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, news (especially local to the Central PA brewery scene), as well as covering other topics of our interests – such as hiking, literature and books, board games, and video games which we sometimes stream with our friends over at Knights of Nostalgia. We are currently listed as #7 on FeedSpot’s “Top 100 Beer Blogs” and #8 on FeedSpot’s “Top 40 Pennsylvania Blogs”. (As of January 2023.) Thank you for reading our site today, please subscribe, follow, and bookmark. Please reach out to us if you are interested in working together. If you would like to donate to the blog you can here: Donate to The Beer Thrillers. Thank you!

You can also check out our partnership and affiliation with Pretzels.com, where ordering pretzels and using our affiliate code – AFFILIATE CODE IS THEBEERTHRILLERS20 – will help you get wonderful pretzels and help us maintain and keep this blog running. Thank you!

If you would like to reach out to us for product reviews, beer reviews, press release writing, and other media – please contact us at thebeerthrillers@gmail.com. Thank you.

(Thank you for reading. The opinions, thoughts, and expressions of each article posted on The Beer Thrillers represents the author of the content and only themselves. It does not express the opinions, beliefs, or ideas held by The Beer Thrillers or any company in which the author themselves work for. Each piece of written content is written by the creator(s) listed in the authorial section on each article unless otherwise noted. Their opinions, comments, and words on screen do not represent any company in which they work for and / or are affiliated with or any non – profits that they contribute to. Thank you.)

The 107th Annual Farm Show

On Friday – January 6th, 2023 – the 107th Annual Pennsylvania Farm Show kicked off at the (historic?) Farm Show Arena / Expo Hall / Building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The annual event brings people from all across the states in various agricultural industries to Harrisburg; to showcase, to compete, to interact, intermingle, and have a good time.

It also usually brings bad weather as well. Which knock on wood, all we’ve gotten is a little bit of light snow this morning so far.

Friday was primarily just the food market and a few other events (a rodeo, and a few others being examples). The milkshakes were out, the talk of all the land, as always, and there was also free parking Friday so the food court was absolutely jammed pack.

Farm Show – Best of Beer Awards

The Farm Show introduced the Best of Craft Beer Awards in 2019. This makes it the fourth year of them doing the awards (the awards went virtual in 2020).

You can read the rules for entry here: Department 34 – Beer Awards Rules and Entry Information.

Over the years there has been numerous winners from across the state. Some notables being Troegs Independent Craft Brewing, Liquid Hero Brewing, Wallenpaupack Brewing, Tattered Flag Brewery and Distillery, and many more.

Let’s get to this year’s winners:

Best in Beer Winners – 2023

First, you can see the full list of entries and winners directly from the Farm Show’s site here: Department 34 – Craft Beer Entries (PDF). The PDF page is a bit confusing and shows all entries, how many points they received, if they are PA Preferred, and if they won a medal. No mention of categories or anything.

I will help you out here and break down the categories (best that I can) and show who won what place, and will list if it’s PA Preferred (more on what that is afterwards).

Whew that was a workout. Needless to say there’s no rhyme or reason to their PDF layout (if you click the link above you’ll see what I mean). Its also rife with spelling errors (of both beer names and breweries). But hopefully I made enough heads and tails for you to know who won and what they won.

PA Preferred

PA Preferred is a big deal, but even a bigger deal around Farm Show time. The breweries and brewers who do it make a big mention of it and a big “to – do” about it. The point of it is to use all Pennsylvania products, from the malt and grain to the hops and to the water and everything else in between. There is becoming more and more of a bigger push to go “all Pennsylvanian” with breweries. Troegs Brewing, Wallenpaupack Brewing, Logyard Brewing, Boneshire Brew Works, Hemauer Brewing, and several others are striving to make more and more of their beers this way.

For More Information on the Farm Show

• Farm Show Documents: Department 34 – Beer Awards
• Farm Show Documents: Department 34 – Entry Rules
• Farm Show Schedule
• Local 21 News: Getting ready for the 2023 PA Farm Show: What you need to know
• Farm Show.gov

For More of our Award Articles

Looking for more articles about breweries and brewers winning awards? Check these out:

• 2022 NAGBW Awards
• 2021 NAGBW Awards
• 2020 NAGBW Awards
• 2022 Great American Beer Festival (GABF) Winners: Pennsylvania
• 2021 GABF Winners: Pennsylvania
• 2020 GABF Winners: Pennsylvania
• Allusion Brewing Company Wins Two Top Awards
• The Battle of the Breweries (2022) Winner Is…..

Thanks For Reading

Tomorrow I’ll do a break down of this article and give better statistics of the winners from the Farm Show. Running out of time this morning and have to get ready for work. So look for that tomorrow.

Hope everyone has gotten a chance to go to the Farm Show and support Pennsylvania and their local community. Plus – you might as well get a milkshake, everyone else is.

Cheers All!

-B. Kline

As always, thank you everyone for reading! Leave your likes, comments, suggestions, questions, etc, in the comments section. Or use the Feedback – Contact Us – page, and we’ll get right back to you! You can also reach out to us at our direct e-mail address: thebeerthrillers@gmail.com

Thank you for visiting our blog. Please make sure to follow, bookmark, subscribe, and make sure to comment and leave feedback and like the blog posts you read. It will help us to better tailor the blog to you, the readers, likes and make this a better blog for everyone.

You can check out our different directories here: Beer Reviews, Hike Reviews, Book Reviews, Brewery News, Brewery Openings, Brewer Interviews, and Travelogues.

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Facebook Group, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

You can now find us on our Discord Server here: The Beer Thrillers (Discord Server). We’ve also joined LinkTree to keep track of all of our social media pages, as well as hot new articles we’ve written.

The Beer Thrillers are a blog that prides itself on writing beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, news (especially local to the Central PA brewery scene), as well as covering other topics of our interests – such as hiking, literature and books, board games, and video games which we sometimes stream with our friends over at Knights of Nostalgia. We are currently listed as #7 on FeedSpot’s “Top 100 Beer Blogs” and #8 on FeedSpot’s “Top 40 Pennsylvania Blogs”. Thank you for reading our site today, please subscribe, follow, and bookmark. Please reach out to us if you are interested in working together. If you would like to donate to the blog you can here: Donate to The Beer Thrillers. Thank you!

You can also check out our partnership and affiliation with Pretzels.com, where ordering pretzels and using our affiliate code – AFFILIATE CODE IS THEBEERTHRILLERS20 – will help you get wonderful pretzels and help us maintain and keep this blog running. Thank you!