Today was our second and last session at the 2008 Great American Beer Festival. The Saturday day session is the ‘connoisseur’ event exclusively for members of the Brewers Association and American Homebrewers Association. You even get a glass glass as opposed to the plastic one the masses get. This is also when the Brewers Association announces the medals in the beer competition.
Before the medal announcement began, there were two beers I wanted to try. The Dissident from Deschutes is a Flanders-style sour brown ale and is getting a lot of press lately. As I am going through somewhat of a sour phase right now, I loved it. And the judges loved it, too, as the Dissident took Gold in the American Style Sour Ale category.
The other beer was Sierra Nevada’s Chico Estate Fresh Hop Ale. Made from fresh hops grown at their Chico brewery, I really wanted to try this beer because I doubt I will see it in Monterey area.
Now for the announcing of the medal winners. There are 75 different categories and each of the winners is called out and the brewers walk across the stage to receive their medal and get their picture taken with Charlie Papazian. The categories range from “Fruit or Vegetable Beers” to “American Style Specialty Lager” (swept by Anheuser-Busch) to “Old Ale or Strong Ale”
And the reading of the winners is quite spirited. The crowd cheers a win by their favorite brewery, groans when their least favorite brewery medals, and grumbles when only a bronze is awarded in the category. This actually happened in the English Style India Pale Ale category.
The most spirited group was from Iron Hill Brewery whose various locations walked away with six medals. Probably numbering a dozen, they would shout and jump for joy whenever they were announced as a winner. The group had matching shirts with the motto “Our beer snobs can beat up your wine snobs”.
The other big winner was Firestone-Walker, which hauled in an impressive six medals. Although it is two hours away, Firestone-Walker is part of the Central Coast so we are now adopting them as our local brewery.
Once the medals are announced, the crowd scrambles to go sample the medal winning beers. And as if magic, the brewery signs that display the names of the beers suddenly have little gold, silver or bronze medal sticker next to the winners.
In the scramble I managed to sample three medal winners.
Arquebus, from our Boston favorite Cambridge Brewing, won in the Experimental Beer category. And experimental it was. Described by the brewery as a summer barleywine, Arquebus had a syrupy sweet character that reminded me of an ice wine.
From our local medal winner Firestone-Walker, I tried was Pale 31, which won bronze in the American Style Pale Ale category. They also won Gold in this category.
Finally, I tried Bishop’s Tipple Trippel from Main Street Brewery in Corona, CA. Winner in the Belgian Style Abbey Ale category, my main motivation in trying their Gold medal winner was that when we visited the brewery years ago, we found the beer lacking. It has definitely improved.
With the session winding down, the last beer we searched out was Sexual Chocolate Imperial Stout from Foothills Brewery in Winston-Salem, NC. Of course, the name was a draw, but the beer was very chocolaty and at 9.75% VERY much an imperial stout.
Merideth finished up the afternoon playing guitar hero with our friend Brad Ruppert and his crew from Beer Magazine. She was able to belt out Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf” to the enjoyment of the gathered crowd. Unfortunately, her band failed on their attempt at the GoGos classic “We Got the Beat”.
Our first GABF is over and we survived. We only tried about 50 of the 1,967 beers available but we had a great time at what has to be America’s greatest beer spectacle.
Our day in Denver began where every beer geek ends up at some time or another in Denver; Falling Rock. This epicenter of the Colorado beer scene draws people to its taps on a normal day. But during GABF, specials events and special beers ensure a large, thirsty and boisterous crowd. And when Chris, the owner, comes on the PA to announce a new special keg is being tapped, the cheers ring throughout the pub.
After a short stop at our hotel, it was off to our very first session of the Great American Beer Festival. Here I should add a disclaimer. We have media passes so we got to enter the hall early through a special door, bypassing the immensely huge line of people waiting to get in. We heard anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour wait so note to any future attendees…. get in line early.
The breweries are grouped by region and then alphabetically within the region. As expected, breweries such as Russian River, Lost Abbey and Dogfish had long lines, which we avoided. We heard a number of different strategies such as come prepared with a “hit list” or concentrate on one particular region at a time but we opted for the wander continuously and just randomly choose a beer.
For Merideth, her favorite might have been the peanut butter beer from Blue Moon. Recommended by our friend, Jay Brooks, Merideth immediately sought out this odd brew. And it was odd, at least to me.
Wednesday Chris and I survived me accidentally using his toothbrush to have another great day in the Rocky Mountains. We got an early start in order to drive the three hours from Frisco to Colorado Springs. We took the back roads, which were both beautiful and interesting. On our way, we drove through the snow dusted mountains where the temperature got down to 31 degrees according to the car. We passed through small mountain towns like Hartsel and Fairplay (formerly known as South Park). Apparently South Park didn’t like the association with the politically incorrect, wrong on so many levels, but darn funny cartoon of the same name, so it became Fairplay. We thought they gave up a big marketing opportunity, but maybe that was the point.
Coming into Colorado Springs, the first brewery we hit was Rocky Mountain Brewery. Attached to a homebrew supply shop, Rocky Mountain opened in June of this year. We then moved on to Bristol Brewing. It was somewhat of a sad day for me overall because many years ago I came to visit an old friend here in Colorado Springs…without Chris. At that time, she took me to several breweries, one of which was Bristol. Of course, I didn’t get to count it again, which meant that Chris gained a brewery on me. Bristol was a friendly place and we chatted with the bartender and another employee who was trying desperately to avoid studying his chemistry. We enjoyed our visit sampling their kolsch, Oktoberfest, small beer, and the Red Rocket Pale Ale, which we bought to take home.
After Bristol Brewing, it was on to Phantom Canyon to meet our friends Eli and Fran. Phantom Canyon was another brewery that I was not able to count because I had already been there. While I didn’t remember the place, the List doesn’t lie. Chris gained another one on me. We ate some very tasty food as we sampled the beers. I ended up with the Queen’s Blonde Ale and Chris had the IPA.
Then it was on to the focus of the evening, the pre-GABF party at Trinity Brewing. With a motto of “Artisanal beer, slow food, conscious people”, Trinity is a green, eco-friendly establishment with a great atmosphere and cute wait staff. The food offerings included almond stuffed bacon wrapped dates (very yummy!), sweet potato fries and Belgian fries. Trinity has 25 taps and the pre-GABF shindig featured all Colorado beers.
I have no problem admitting that Merideth and I are Europhiles. Yesterday, when we were on a bus shuttle at LAX, we saw a Swiss Air plane taxiing to depart. I immediately turned to Merideth and commented how it would be nice to headed to the Swiss Alps. Two minutes later, we saw the Aer Lingus flight take off for Dublin. I immediately mused that it would be nice to be heading to Dublin. But we weren’t going to our beloved Europe, rather Colorado. But, I have to admit, Colorado is a pretty nice destination to visit especially if you like beer.
Our first ‘real’ stop was Tommyknocker Brewery in Idaho Springs, a short drive outside of Denver. A quaint little town, Idaho Springs was where the Colorado gold rush began, so everything about the town and brewery is mining. A “Tommyknocker” is a mine fairy and they can be either mischievous or friendly.
Being the professionals we are, we quickly recovered as our final destination, Frisco, was only a few more miles. We quenched our thirst at Backcountry Brewing, elevation 9,097 feet.
After two breweries, it was time for some exercise. We decided to walk back to Dillon along the reservoir trail and finish our day at Dillon’s other, and hopefully open, brewpub.
The Year in Beer visits Colorado in October for our first-ever visit to the pinnacle of American beer events, the Great American Beer Festival. The 27th annual edition is a three day event featuring 400 breweries and 1,800 beers.
Our first day in Colorado will take us across the continental divide to the western slope, completely virgin territory for us. Our list for the western slope includes:
With hopefully nine new breweries on our list, it is back to Denver for the Great American Beer Festival. At this point, I would usually give some insight on our expectations but as I said, this is our first time. I have an inkling we will be drinking beer – one ounce at a time – and that we will know a bunch of people.