Great American Beer Festival – Denver, CO

I had heard the line to get into the convention center tended to be horrendously long, so my wife, Kim, and I set out for our first Great American Beer Festival session around 10am. It was a rare grey and misty day in the Mile High City; a perfect day to spend indoors sampling hundreds of beers. I was pleasantly surprised to find quite a few “normals” on the bus headed to GABF in addition to the usual riff raff. On the way, I overheard a group of GABF veterans discussing their game plan and made note of their pretzel necklaces. We packed a bag of pretzel rods which provided great absorption, but weren’t nearly as fashionable as the necklaces. Oh well, we’re rookies, this was to be expected.

We arrived downtown around 11 and decided we should probably get some food in our bellies, lest we pass out before drinking our IQ in samples. After enjoying a giant sandwich courtesy of Jimmy John’s, we made our way to the venue. To say the line was long would be an enormous understatement. I’m not sure exactly how many people were in front of us, but it had to be in the hundreds. According to one of the guys in line behind us, he had attended the Thursday session and made the mistake of getting there late. He said the line wrapped almost all the way around the building (which was HUGE). Yikes.

We dodged a bullet early when I realized that the tickets said “NO BACKPACKS” in big, bold letters which was unfortunate considering I had brought my brand new laptop bag. My wife, quick thinker that she is, put on the laptop bag and VIOLA! it was now a purse. The doors opened a little before 12:30 and we were in the hall with a sample in our hands within 5 minutes. The GABF staff have really gotten the routine down after 27 years. We started off in the Pacific section of the hall with an eye towards Russian River’s booth. Unfortunately, we weren’t the only ones looking to see what RR had to offer and found a line stretching across the aisle already. We figured out pretty quickly that a line meant that you DEFINITELY wanted what that booth had. Case in point: New Glarus Brewing out of New Glarus, WI. I had never heard of it, but they had the longest line in the festival by far. It was well worth it to get a taste of their Wisconsin Belgian Red and Raspberry Tart framboise. Apparently, NG beers are only available in the cheese state and can’t be shipped over state lines, so all the out of staters had to get their fill at GABF. It was so good, we went back for seconds… and thirds. A word to the future GABF rookies: if a booth has a long line, don’t be shy about pounding your sample when you get to the front of the line and asking for a second, third, or even fourth sample. Craft beer aficionados are a pretty mellow lot by nature and are even more so after a couple hours of sampling; they won’t mind and will probably do the same.

Rather than pretend that I was able to coherently rate discern whether or not the beers I sampled fit the characteristics of the style (the tastebuds in charge of that went to sleep after sample number 14 or so), I will just say it was more awesome than I could have ever imagined. I have been to my fair share of huge conventions, events and concerts that have turned out to suck.  I was pleasantly surprised to see how smoothly GABF handled the 46,000 attendees and how all but the most popular beers had not run out until last call. And, as much as it pains my Ohioan soul to say it, the Michigan Brewers’ Guild booth was the best in show among the brewing collectives. Their pamphlets were informative, their booth looked great, their beer selection was vast and the guy manning the booth truly loved what he was doing. [We took pictures of the booth, but it was late in the day, so they weren't exactly good or even Photoshoppable.] One thing that was missing was a Bells booth. Rob talks about them non-stop and, since they don’t have any distribution in Colorado, I was looking forward to giving them a try. Hopefully we’ll see them next year.

FYI- September 24, 25, 26, 2009! Start saving your pennies now! Prost!

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Gold: Munich Dark, Redwood Brewing Co., Flint, MI
Silver: Bastone Münchner Dunkel, Bastone Brewery, Royal Oak, MI
Gold: The Detroit Dwarf, The Detroit Beer Co., Detroit, MI
Bronze: Luciernaga, Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, Dexter, MI
Gold: Cream Stout, Redwood Brewing Co., Flint, MI

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