This weekend, two Orange County breweries will represent North Carolina at the Great American Beer Festival, a top U.S. beer festival and competition in Denver.
Carolina Brewery in Chapel Hill and Mystery Brewing Company in Hillsborough will both enter beer in the competition.
This is Carolina Brewery’s seventh or eighth year participating, Head Brewer Nate Williams said. It's Mystery Brewing's sixth year, said CEO and brewer Erik Myers. This is the second year Mystery has not only competed, but poured their beer at the competition.
This year, Carolina Brewery will be entering their “core brands” of beer, including Sky Blue Golden Ale, Flagship India Pale Ale, Copperline Amber Ale, Pamlico Pale Ale and Oatmeal Porter, Williams said.
“Those are the five brands that we try to sell the most of, so we’re hoping to garner them some accolades,” he said.
Mystery Brewing is only entering one beer this year: their mild ale called Pickwick, named after Charles Dickens’ first public work, Myers said. 
“We have a literary naming theme in general and the recipe is an old-style English ale based off of the 19th century in England,” Myers said. “I was looking for something that was roughly the same time scale for a literary story and Pickwick is about a hundred years off, but it’s still a really good work.”
Williams said Carolina Brewery has participated for the past couple of years because of the honest and quantifiable feedback they receive from judges. Winning medals is also a big deal for the brewing community, and he said Carolina Brewery has previously won a gold medal for their Flagship IPA, along with two bronze medals for the Oatmeal Porter and the Sky Blue Golden Ale.
Mystery Brewing won a silver medal at GABF a few years ago. Myers said winning a medal leads to demonstrable financial upsides, like more beer sales and increased foot traffic.
