I hate to beat the Great American Beer Festival to death, but as "the biggest selection of American beers ever gathered together on the globe," it was certainly a news worthy event. And those of you who have taken a peek at the winners' list know the results can take some time to sort through.

Which is why Brian Kolesar has done us a great service by breaking down the results of this year's fest and giving us "a few numbers to ponder." As he so eloquently understates it, "a mere 230 medals were awarded to 142 different breweries/brewpubs across 81 categories." Did I mention the GABF is the Guinness World Record Holder for beers tapped in one location?

Eleven breweries or brewpubs brought home four or more medals: MillerCoors, Lost Abbey/Pizza Port, Rock Bottom, Firestone Walker, Iron Hill, AleSmith, Anheuser-Busch, Alaskan, Pabst, Pyramid, The SandLot. Though as you can tell, you need to be in it to win it, so many of the above provided plenty of enteries.

Any of the beers on the winner's list near and dear to your heart? Let us know in the comments.

[via The Beer Lounge] [Photo Credit: greatamericanbeerfestival.com]

The winners from this weekend's Great American Beer Festival have been announced. With over 75 categories, the list can be a tad overwhelming, but it still serves as a handy guide to finding great beers of every style, price point and availability.

A few personal thoughts:

• With 104 entries, the American-Style IPA category was the most hotly contested. Legendary brewery Russian River took second with their Blind Pig IPA, beat out by Firestone Walker's Union Jack IPA. Scoring two golds, a silver and a bronze, Firestone Walker appears to be the GABF's go-to brewer in the pale ale department. Unfortunately, if you don't live in California or Nevada you might have trouble finding one.
• In the least hotly contested department, check out Category 29: American-Style Specialty Lager. I seriously need to find out which 21 beers finished below Busch Ice. My condolences.
  
• Finally, congratulations to Pyramid Breweries for taking home the Mid-Size Brewer of the Year award. My travels up to the Pyramid Brewery in Berkeley, California sparked my love of microbrews at the tender age of... uh, ahem... 21. The gold medal winning Apricot Ale (out of 87 entries in the Fruit or Vegetable Beer category) will always hold a special place in my heart... and liver.

[Photo Credit: beertown.org]

I'd rather devote my holiday prep time to decorating cookies and wrapping gifts, but I still have a deep appreciation of the incredible amount of work that goes into making a prize-winning gingerbread house. Even if that house won a ribbon at the local school holiday bake sale and not at a national competition. The above gingerbread house, found via the lollypix blog, won the grand prize at the national gingerbread house competition in Florida (you can peek inside here) this year.

I'll stick with cookies, but read on for a few more houses.

When Food & Wine announced that they were going to be hosting a food photography contest, more than a few bloggers got excited about the prospect of having their work published on the site, not to mention the fact that the first-place prize of a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT camera kit as quite appealing. The winners have been announced and it looks like the competition was stiff. First prize went to Jessica Thompson, for the photo of Papaya-Jalapeno Sorbet in Black and White Espresso Cups on the left, above. There were four first place runners up, all of whom received copies of the books of F&W's Best of the Best, Cocktails 2006 and Star Chefs on the Road. One of the four was Nika, of Nika's Culinaria, with her photo of Spice Cake with Homemade Chocolate Sauce (right).

Other food blogging participants included Christine Cassidy, Anita of Dessert First (with this photo), Adrienne of Nosheteria and Lara from Cook & Eat. It's too bad that Food & Wine didn't publish links back to blogs, if the contestants had them, but if you are one of the runners up and I missed your blog here, feel free to leave a comment and I'll add it to the list!

Hopefully, you had a chance to take a look at the gallery of entries for this past month's Does my blog look good in this? photography contest. If so, you'll know that the competition was very tough. Judges spend many grueling (drooling?) hours scrutinizing and rating the pictures before the scores were calculated and the winners were determined. We actually featured the winning entry here at Slashfood weeks before it was entered!

 The overall winners were:
1. Baked Strawberry Pudding
2. Cinnamon Sugar Beignets
3. Blueberry Tarts with Lemon Cream
4. Beet Risotto with Fresh Garlic and Fava Beans
5. Spirale di filo ai Pistacchi

Pictured: Fairly Easy Fairy Cakes (the recipient of the viewer's choice award)

Kids come up with some interesting ideas. How about a Blueberry Syrup Waffle Popsicle, or a Caramel Apple Carnival Pop? These are two of the winning flavor combinations from last year's Flavorologist contest.

If your son or daughter is between 6 and 12 and has his own ideas about what ice cream should taste like, he or she is eligible to enter this year's Nestle's Flavorologist contest. By submitting an original flavor combination for a frozen popsicle, a flavor name and description of the appearance of the popsicle, along with short "resume" describing their experience playing with foods, they could win a batch of custom popsicles! There are 10 winners and included in each prize package are a $1000 US savings bond and a school ice cream party. One grand prize winner will get a behind the scenes factory tour and an all-expenses paid trip for 4 to California.

Last Friday, the winners of the 2006 Brewers Association World Beer Cup (aka "the most prestigious beer competition in the world") were announced in Seattle. This year's event was the largest on record, with over 2,000 entries coming in from almost 60 different countries. Beers were judged in 85 different categories, from "non-alcoholic malt tonic" to "fruit and vegetable beer" to "barley wine-style ale." A complete list of winners is available here.