DENVER — Memphis’ Wiseacre Brewing Co. earned two medals at the 2025 Great American Beer Festival on Saturday, including gold for Sky Dog Amber and silver for Tiny Bomb American Pilsner.
Sky Dog Amber took top honors in the International Amber Lager category — a new GABF category for 2025 that drew 89 entries. The 5% ABV, 150-calorie Mexican-style lager debuted in August and draws inspiration from Vienna-style lagers brewed in Mexico.
Davin Bartosch, Wiseacre’s co-founder and brewmaster, was both elated and surprised by the win.
“We had never even brewed that beer before. There was no experimental version of it,” he said.
“We just went to town, and we were like, ‘let’s make a Mexican Amber Lager.’ And the first time we brewed it, it won a gold medal.’”
The win marks the second consecutive gold for Wiseacre’s Sky Dog line; Sky Dog Premium Lager won gold in the American-Style Light Lager category in 2024.
Meanwhile, Tiny Bomb earned a silver medal in the German-Style Pilsener category, which had 184 entries. It’s the second GABF win for Wiseacre’s flagship beer, which previously claimed bronze in 2014.
Today, Tiny Bomb, 4.5% ABV, remains one of the top-selling craft pilsners in the country.
Bartosch was especially thrilled by the Tiny Bomb win on Saturday since it’s such an “enormous category that everybody wants to win in.”
“It’s awesome to repeat with something that you’ve won for before. I had just finished telling a lot of people while I was judging (at GABF), ‘Yeah, Tiny Bomb will never win again.’”
He was happy to be proven wrong.
“I can’t possibly say enough about our team. Our production team is really first class. And everybody that works making beer, cellaring beer, packaging beer — everybody cares so much and they’re so smart and so talented. There’s no freaking way that we have a day like this unless everyone cares.”
Other Tennessee winners at 2025 GABF
Tennessee breweries took home at total of seven medals at the 2025 GABF competition.
In addition to Wiseacre’s two wins, the Tennessee haul included:
- Barrique Brewing & Blending in Nashville won gold for Keeping Beer in the Mixed-Culture Brett Beer category.
- Half Batch Brewing in Henderson won silver for Achtbier in the Bock category.
- Gatlinburg Brewing Co. in Sevierville won silver for Piper’s Pineapple in the Fruited Cider category.
- Gatlinburg Brewing also won bronze for Don’t Feed the Bears in the Brown Porter category.
- Xul Beer Co. in Knoxville won bronze for Barrel Aged Das Cake in the Wood- and Barrel-Aged Dessert Stout category.
About the 2025 GABF competition
A total of 273 breweries and cideries took home 347 medals at today’s award ceremony. A team of 250 expert judges evaluated 8,315 beer and cider entries—including 68 collaboration and 40 Pro-Am submissions—from breweries spanning all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
In all, 1,555 breweries and cideries submitted entries in the competition.
“Year after year, the Great American Beer Festival sets the bar for American brewing (and for the second year in a row, cidermaking). The 2025 competition was no exception,” Chris Williams, competition director for the Brewers Association, said in a press release.
“There were extremely strong showings from numerous breweries and cidermakers across the U.S., maximizing the level of competition among the entire competition community. With 347 winners this year, these medals honor the talent, dedication, and creativity of our nation’s brewers and cider-makers.”
In addition to introducing the International Amber Lager category, the 2025 competition added Mexican-Style Pale Lager and Vera Hop, a one-time category honoring a new USDA-developed hop named for early mycologist Vera Katherine Charles, recognizing women’s contributions to hop science.