Guest Post: The Drew's Trip to the Great American Beer Festival
I am quite excited to have The Drew, aka "the smart guy" from the Backyard Brewing Society, contribute a guest post to APP. The Drew is easily recognized from our backyard exploits by his steady hand, dry sense of humor, and for having the first name "The". Having recovered from his trip to the Great American Beer Festival, he shares his journey below. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Thanks, Drew!
GABF
The Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado is three straight days of beer sampling from over 580 breweries from across the country. Since several members of the Backyard Brewing Society decided to burn all their wife points on a trip to Vegas back in June, the GABF was represented by a relatively small contingent: Dave (DVD), Tim, Jay and your very own guest blogger, Drew.
The festival has four sessions, Thursday, Friday and two on Saturday. The early Saturday session is a members-only event for American Homebrew Society and Brewers Association members. Our group had tickets for the first three, opting not to attempt an 8-hour, double session drinking marathon on Saturday. My AHA membership had the added bonus of allowing us to enter the festival through the much shorter members-only entrance. The regular line easily had 8,000 waiting to get in. Our line however was about 500 people who all got tickets and IDs checked while waiting. Once the doors opened, we were inside immediately and had a solid 30-45 minutes to grab all the free promotional loot before everyone else made it in. Even so, some of the more popular breweries had immediate lines forming.
The Russian River line was 40 people deep the entire festival.
As much as I wanted to try some of their beers, with such a large number of breweries present, most of the tables had no line at all so it was hard to justify waiting.
For all the Alefest veterans out there, let me repeat that: most of the tables didn’t have any line. You could walk right up, get a sample, go straight to the next table and immediately get a sample, repeat for 4 hours. So how does this not turn into a fall down drunken debacle? The festival is run differently than Alefest in a few ways that make a significant difference.
- The tasting glasses are marked for 1oz pours and the serving crews rarely overpoured. Compared to the 4oz pours at Alefest, that seems tiny but it’s plenty of beer to get a decent taste and decide if you like it or not. It also prevents you from slamming 4oz of beer every time you need to empty your glass.
- Water coolers are everywhere. We made a rule that every time we passed a water cooler, we had a cup to rehydrate. No waiting in a food line for a $3 bottle of water. Staying hydrated definitely helps you hold up over the course of the event.
- Pouring from pitchers instead of bottles. Just makes the lines go faster. When you don’t have to constantly wait in line, it doesn’t seem nearly as important to grab a sample and immediately get back in line just to make sure you get your money’s worth.
There were a handful of people in costume for the event. Tons of pretzel necklaces and a few food necklaces of the non pretzel variety: bagels, Slim Jims, vegetable tray (wtf?).
The Hop Czar made an appearance.
The Thursday night and Saturday afternoon sessions had a lot of people but were comfortable. The Friday night session was crowded. There were several brewmasters representing their tables. This was more apparent on Saturday once the competition winners were announced and medals handed out. A couple recognizable beer celebrities were also present.
After three straight days of beer tasting I certainly discovered some winners. Two of the most memorable were Denver Beer Co’s Graham Cracker Porter, a deliciously sweet and biscuity beer, and Molé Stout from Ska Brewing. This beer was dark, spicy and had a combination of chocolate, cinnamon and clove that would go well with Mexican food or Skyline Chili.
Some of the other breweries and beers that I enjoyed include:
FirestoneWalker
Figueroa Mountain
Deschutes (Ed. Me - I hope they eventually make it to Ohio!)
Ninkasi
Oskar Blues
Strange – Cherry Kriek
RAM Restaurant & Brewery – Very Cherry Porter
Those are the highlights. The sheer number of beers available means that several are going to be on the cutting edge of craft beer taste (aka weird beers).
Cucumber Kolsch – Flat 12 Bierworks
Arlo’s PB&J Ale – Catawba Valley Brewing Co.
Prehistoric Dog Salted Wheat Beer – TRVE Brewing Co.
Billy’s Chilies – Twisted Pine Brewing Co.
Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Porter – Willoughby Brewing Co.
Campfire Stout (Graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows) – Highwater Brewing Co.
The PB&J actually tasted like a sandwich with raspberry jelly. It would have been a good sandwich. As a beer it was only semi-successful.
There’s a lot more to do in Denver than just drink beer. Thursday and Friday before the festival we did some sightseeing and took a tour through the Stranahan’s whisky distillery.
Stranahan’s is a small craft distillery that produces about 1300 barrels a year. As a homebrewer who’s debated purchasing a used barrel for flavoring beer, I was curious to know what they do with their used barrels, and whether Southwest would let me check one as a second bag. Turns out they sell their barrels to Breckenridge Brewery who uses them to age their Well Built ESB.
Breckenridge happens to be located a whole whopping five blocks away and has a fantastic BBQ menu. Guess where we headed next.
If the Backyard Brewing Society ever does enter (or found) a brewing and barbequing biathlon competition, we will have some pretty serious competition. Pulled pork, homemade sausage, tenderloin, ribs, you name it, they cook it and the beers are pretty solid too.
We did the Breckenridge brewery tour and sure enough, there’s a stack of Stranahan’s barrels stacked up to age. On the left side there’s also one lone tequila barrel. The tour guide wouldn’t say what’s in it but the Agave Wheat would be a good guess.
If we had to do it all again, I would recommend doing the Thursday night and Saturday afternoon GABF sessions and taking the day off Friday to drive up into the mountains. It was definitely an enjoyable trip. GABF advertises itself as the largest beer festival in America so what’s next? Oktoberfest, anyone?
