Model A Brewing wins bronze at Great American Beer Festival

Tega Cay's Model A Brewing Co. won a bronze medal at the 2026 Great American Beer Festival, the largest commercial beer competition in the country.

The Brewers Association announced winners Sunday, Oct. 11, at the Levitt Pavilion in Denver. Model A's Amber Hearth, an oak-aged winter warmer, placed third in the Wood- and Barrel-Aged Beer category, which drew 23 entries, according to the official winners list. Wren House Brewing Co. of Phoenix took gold for a whiskey barrel-aged Marzen, and 1718 Brewing of Ocracoke, North Carolina, took silver.

Model A was one of only two South Carolina breweries to medal. Liability Brewing Co. of Greenville won gold in the Belgian Style Abbey Ale category for its Feral Garden Gnome.

Judges evaluated 7,267 beer and cider entries from roughly 1,300 breweries and cideries across 49 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, the Tega Cay Sun reported. A panel of 225 professional judges and more than 200 volunteers worked through the field over three days.

Only 336 medals were awarded.

Head brewer Jerod Jones developed Amber Hearth, which Model A first released as its 2024 anniversary beer. The beer also won silver in the Barrel Aged Dark Beer category at the U.S. Open Beer Championship in July 2026, one of three medals Model A earned at that competition.

The GABF bronze follows a series of competition wins for the Stonecrest Boulevard brewery. The South Carolina Brewers Guild named Model A the state's Best Overall Brewery in 2025 after six of its beers medaled at the South Carolina Brewers Cup. Owner Brad O'Connor praised Jones in a November 2025 report by WRHI, calling him "our Michelangelo of brewing."

A group of friends, most of them longtime Tega Cay residents, founded Model A in December 2020 at 1175 Stonecrest Blvd., near the Stonecrest shops along S.C. 160. The brewery described its philosophy in that same 2025 profile as making "beer-flavored beer."

At the Sept. 27 South Carolina Brewers Cup, Model A added another gold for Not My Gumdrop Buttons, a winter seasonal, in the Spiced Beer category. It was the only Tega Cay brewery on the state medal list.