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ASN VIP Package - Mondial de la biere Festival
June 3-7, 2009
Only $75!
Inside Ale Street
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| At the GABF with BeerSensei |
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| Written by Warren Monteiro | ||||||||
| November 30, 2008 | ||||||||
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It’s been another sparkling year for the Great American Beer Fest in Denver Oct 9-11. Sessions were Thursday, Friday and Saturday night with a Saturday afternoon Members-Only Award Session; all were sold out two weeks in advance.
Thousands of topers formed an ever-tightening circle around the Colorado Convention Center waiting for the doors to open at 5:30 Thursday. Touts uneasily haunted the periphery wondering what their mark-up should be for the last tickets out there. The sheer massive weight of the event hovered over opening time. The crowd was serious, well-behaved and thirsty. And why not? Where else can a craft beer fan taste a frothy ounce from nearly any brewery in America? Four pints and you’re already 56 breweries ahead. Six pints and it’s 96. Seven pints and… well, use your own judgment! Out on the floor 2,052 beers from 432 different breweries were on offer with an additional 40 breweries submitting beers for judging. Crucial to the process were 127 judges from 11 countries and 2,600 volunteers. The thoughtful layout allowed tasting by region, with food and sundry stands distributed throughout. Sideshows and Awards Apart from the Budweiser Main Stage, on offer were: a Beer and Food Pavilion with special pairings and presenters; Oskar Blues’ Silent Disco (with headphones); a 10-minute tasting opportunity at the You Be the Judge booth; and a Support Your Local Brewery section with tastes from local brewers guilds across America. A special area was devoted to the 58 entries in the Pro-Am program, in which an American Homebrewers Association award winner is invited to collaborate with a professional craft brewer to scale up the medalist’s prize recipe. Add a GABF swag shop for take-homes, a book shop with the latest releases, a beer publication booth with papers like this one and it’s bound to be a full evening. The Saturday award session celebrated the fact that craft brewing continues to surge ahead of the rest of a static beer industry, with special growth in seasonals this year. Brewery and Brewer of the Year Awards were: Large Brewing Co./Large Co. Brewer (Anheuser-Busch/Doug Muhleman); Mid-Size Brewing Co./Brewer (Pyramid Brewing/Simon Pesch); and Small Brewing Co./Brewer (AleSmith Brewing/The AleSmith Brewing Team). Large Brewpub/Brewer was awarded to Rock Bottom Brewing/Rock Bottom Brewing Team and Small Brewpub/Brewer went to Redwood Brewing/Bill Wamby. We congratulate the 2008 Michael Jackson Journalism Award winners: Lew Bryson for Trade and Specialty Beer Media, Mark Marion for Consumer Electronic Media, and Adem Tepedelen for Consumer Print Media. Medals Galore No point trying to list 75 categories of gold, bronze and silver medals here. A full list of all the winners is available online at the Brewers Association website (www.beertown.org/events/gabf. In all, 222 medals were awarded in 75 categories (plus three medals for Pro-Am). The highest number of entries per category was 106 for American Style IPA. It’s easy to grasp the fierce level of competition here, making it worth remembering that there are plenty of fascinating beers that didn’t win and they’re all on hand. There seemed to be a special temptation this year to brew and even blend barrel-aged beers. Here’s a short roster of entries just shy of medals that made this writer’s taste buds melt with no apologies: Port Brewing Red Poppy (sour cherries in French oak) and Isabella Proximus (a collaboration brew/blend from the big five — Tomme, Rob, Adam, Vinnie and Sam); Russian River Consecration (cabernet sauvignon barrel); Deschutes Black Butte XX (20% barrel aged porter blend with chocolate and coffee beans); Full Sail Top Sail (10 mos. bourbon barrel) and the amazing Maui Black Pearl (Rum Barrel CoCoNut Porter). Fresh (wet) hops caught on this year also. It remains to be seen whether their popularity will be seen as style-enhancement or an entirely new category. There were eccentric brewery names (Weasel Boy, Duck-Rabbit and lots of dogs and bears) and tricky appellations (Hell in Keller, The Flying Mouflan). Award labels were stuck up in the booths immediately after judging so the crowd could have a go at the winners. Prepare for Next Year Are you fired up to go yet? Here are a few caveats for next year’s wary first-timer. Get your tickets mailed to you up front. Go to www.beertown.org and view the floor plan so you can find your favorites in a hurry; then line up at least an hour early and bring a warm book. Once inside, be aware that lines instantly form in front of perennial favorites: New Glarus, Alaskan Brewing, Russian River, Dogfish Head, and pay attention that many much-sought brews are rationed per session and can go away really quickly if you don’t step into that queue. A canny move any night is to check out early from the Festival and repair to Falling Rock Tavern so you can sit down and have a full glass of great beer before the crowd hits. After the awards have been bestowed Saturday, there remains one more evening session, after which we hope all our favorite brewers go home with empty kegs and a medal or three, their heads full of plans for Sept. 24-26, 2009.
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