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.
But before we get to GABF, we are going to do a quick Colorado brewery tour to make some progress towards our goal of reaching 450 by the end of the year.
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:
- Backcountry Brewery
- Dillon Dam Brewery
- Pug Ryan’s
- Tommyknockers
Then it is off to Colorado Springs where we will hook up with our friends Eli and Fran for a beer tour. Our list for Colorado Springs is:
- Bristol Brewing
- Judge Baldwin’s
- Phantom Canyon
- Rocky Mountain Brewery
- Trinity
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.
I do know we are going to the Thursday session and Saturday AHA members session. In between there will be a bevy of beer related events we will be attending.
We are excited and look forward to our first GABF…