The 2024 Great American Beer Festival just happened in Denver, and the Land of Lincoln had nine winners this year! Beer fans from across the Midwest need to take some time and seek out and sample these elite award-winning brews from Illinois.

Greenstar Brewing out of Chicago won the GOLD for their Bateman Bier in the American Amber Lager category.

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Double Clutch Brewing Co. in Evanston, Il. took SILVER for their Altbier in the German style Altbier category.

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Chicago’s Piece Brewery won SILVER in the German-style Pilsener category with their Door Code

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Pollyanna Brewing Co. in Lemont, Il. won BRONZE in the American style IPA category for their Lexical Gap.

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Moody Tongue Brewing Co. from Chicago’s Cassis won BRONZE in the Fruited Wood-and Barrel-Aged Sour Beer category

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Winning BRONZE in the Kellerbier or Zwickelbier category was Hopewell Brewing Co. from Chicago for their Tankbeer entry.

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In the Specialty Saison category Cruz Blanca Brewery in Chicago won BRONZE for their Wild Honey.

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More Brewing Co. from Huntley, IL. landed a BRONZE for Barrel-Aged Dopplebock in the Wood and Barrel Aged beer category

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Plainfield Illinois’ Werk Force Brewing Co. nabbed a SILVER in the Wood-and Barrell Aged Strong Stout category for their Humongous Sleepy Chungus Bear.

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In the region, Illinois almost doubled up Wisconsin in the medal count, and won three times the medals as Missouri and more than double the medals as Iowa this year.

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All of these are small breweries or just neighborhood breweries or new brewers just starting to get things going.

LOOK: Best Beers From Every State

To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list's average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.

Gallery Credit: Angela Underwood

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Gallery Credit: Stacker