It’s Jake Schisel’s turn to represent this year.

Schisel, who recently took over as head brewer at the Boise Ram brewpub, will get his first chance to see how his beers stack up against national competition this week.

The Great American Beer Festival — or GABF — is the biggest, most competitive and most prestigious beer competition in the country. Nearly 50,000 beer drinkers are expected to attend the event Thursday through Saturday in the mile-high city. The best and brightest of the American craft brewing industry — 465 breweries — will duke it out for a gold, silver, or bronze medal in 79 different categories this year.

Idaho has its best representation ever for this year’s GABF, as Boise’s Ram and TableRock Brewpub will be joined on the floor by Grand Teton Brewing from Victor and Laughing Dog Brewing from Ponderay.

All four Idaho breweries have entered beers in the competition and will be serving at the festival.

Schisel has a legacy to live up to. Recently departed Ram brewmaster Kevin Bolen, who is now working for Grand Teton Brewing, earned four medals for the Boise Ram at the GABF over the past decade, including a gold medal for his St. Mick’s Dry Stout in 2000.

Schisel is ready to roll. He already beat out 32 other American breweries last year to win the gold medal at the 2010 GABF in the brown porter category for Total Disorder Porter. That is a Ram house beer, with a recipe created by former Boise Ram brewmaster Paul Cook, available at all 17 locations in the Bighorn Brewing chain. So we know Schisel has the chops to create a great beer.

This year, he gets to submit his own recipes.

“I’m feeling really positive about it, but I have to admit I am also feeling some pressure,” Schisel said.

Schisel is entering two new beers this year — the Citizen Steam beer in the amber lager category and Owyhee Oktoberfest in the Dortmunder/German-style Oktoberfest category.

He also is brewing the Total Disorder Porter again for the Ram chain.

The “steam” beer style is generally made by brewing lager yeast at warm fermentation temperatures normally associated with ales. The most iconic example of this style is Anchor Steam Beer, made by the Anchor Brewing Co. in San Francisco.

The steam beer style can be difficult to define — it has a toasty maltiness and hoppy bitterness of an ale with the effervescence of a lager.

The Oktoberfest style is a malty lager with a toasted grain flavor and little hop bitterness.

Both of those are subtle styles, so Schisel is not making it easy on himself.

“You just never know how judges will react — sometimes all it takes is one, and you’re done,” Schisel said, chuckling. “Still, this is a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to go.”

The same goes for Bob McSherry, the brewmaster at TableRock Brewpub, which is entering beers in the GABF competition for only the second time.

TableRock will have four beers on the floor and in competition — the gluten-free pale ale, the Bitterroot Pale Ale, the Blackhop black IPA (known as American Black Ale in the GABF competition), the Hophead IPA and the Hopocalypse Imperial IPA.

“Just the whole week in Denver is amazing. ... Those guys really know how to put on a show,” McSherry said. “Going there and tasting all those beers just rekindles your enthusiasm. The last time I came back and had, like, seven different ideas I wanted to try. It’s such a great event.”

The TableRock beers are made in the Pacific Northwest tradition of taking traditional British-style ales and pumping up the flavor profiles with an emphasis on hops, the pine cone-like flowers that balance the sweetness of malt in beer with bitterness. Hops, the majority of which are grown in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, provide distinctive aroma — think citrus, mint and floral — and additional flavors to beer.

Those categories are also the most competitive. For instance, the TableRock Hophead IPA will compete with 175 other beers this year in the American IPA category.

The GABF is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and organizers say it will be the biggest one yet.

Tickets to the three-day festival, held at the Denver Convention Center at the end of September, sold out in a week this summer — a new record. The beer fans who are expected to attend the four sessions will be able to taste one-ounce samples of 2,400 different American beers. The Brewers Association, which runs the festival, said this will be the largest collection of U.S. beers ever served in one place.

Despite the poor economy over the past several years, the U.S. craft beer market is a growing industry — at a time when regular beer sales are flat.

Craft beer sales grew 11 percent in volume nationally last year, according to the Brewers Association. They’re up an additional 15 percent in the first six months of 2011. Sales for major beer conglomerates — think Anheuser-Busch or Miller/Coors — are stagnant, down 1 percent in 2010.

Follow Patrick Orr’s tweets about craft beer and the GABF next weekend at @IDS_Beer.Patrick Orr: 373-6619