This past weekend I was one of 49,000 people that attended The Great American Beer Festival in Denver Colorado. It was the 28th year for the festival, and the 4th year in a row that I’ve attended. The festival was made up of three public sessions and a member session filled with over 3,500 beers brought by 710 different breweries around the country. This year I attended the first session on Thursday, October 2nd.
If you’ve never been to the event, I highly recommend it. For beer nerds, it’s a time to try hard to get brews from places that don’t always distribute to your state, and to find new breweries to geek out over. For non-beer nerds, it’s an event that will surely turn you into one. I’ve attended each of the public sessions, and I recommend going to the Thursday night session if you can swing it. The beer is first come, first serve, so highly sought after brews often run out. You will also be more likely be able to talk to brewery owners and other beer personalities.
At the event, each brewery gets a booth filled with volunteers to help pour the beer. The booths are sectioned into regions based on where they are located within the country. Many of the breweries also staff their booth with brewery workers and sometimes even the owners and brew masters themselves. Thus you never know what kind of beer rock stars you might run into during the event. This year I had a great conversation with Jason Alstrom of BeerAdvocate. He said that he hadn’t had the chance to visit many Michigan breweries yet, but that he planned to hit up Short’s Brewery during an upcoming trip.
Michigan breweries usually have a nice showing at the festival. This year there were 16 Michigan breweries in attendance from all over the state including Arcadia Brewing Company, Atwater Brewery, Bell’s Brewery Inc., Dark Horse Brewing Company, Dragonmead Microbrewery, Griffin Claw Brewing Company, Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, Kuhnhenn Brewing Co, Latitude 42 brewing Company, New Holland Brewing Co, North Peak Brewing Company, Ore Dock Brewing Company, Redwood Brewing Co, Right Brain Brewery, Rochester Mills Beer Company, and Short’s Brewing Company. Short’s is always one of those breweries that have a giant line, and a pretty awesome booth setup to serve out their brews. It’s nice to know that we aren’t the only ones that appreciate all the amazing beer coming out of Michigan.
The folks at Atwater Brewing included a TV in their booth setup, so that Tiger fans could watch the games as they sampled beer. Unfortunately the outcome wasn’t that awesome, but watching with friends from Michigan was a blast.
The Great American Beer Festival is actually more than just a beer drinking event. It’s the largest commercial beer competition in the World! Over 5,500 beers were judged over the weekend by 222 beer experts from all over the world. They handed out Gold, Silver and Bronze medals to over 234 breweries in order to recognize their amazing work. Medals from Michigan breweries were as follows:
Gold – Short’s Brewery – Key Lime Pie – Experimental Beer
Silver – Bastone Brewery – Private Stock #472 – Wood- and Barrel-Aged Beer
Silver – Bastone Brewery – Thor’s Hammer -Belgian-Style Strong Specialty Ale
Silver – Founders Brewing Co. – Porter – Robust Porter
Bronze – Tapistry Brewing Co. – Peck’s Porter – Robust Porter
Bronze – Stormcloud Brewing Co. – Rainmaker Ale – Belgian-Style Blonde Ale or Pale Ale
Some of the most exciting news that came out of the festival competition this year was that Bastone Brewery won the awards for Small Brewpub and Small Brewpub Brewer of the Year! Congrats to Bastone Brewery and to all the Michigan breweries that took home medals!
If the festival and competition aren’t reason enough to come out to Denver, there are also lots and lots of beer related events that take place the week before and during GABF. There are tap takeovers, beer brunches, brewery tours, midnight beer and food pairings, special collaboration parties, and more. This year I was lucky enough to attend the New Holland Brewing and Carhartt GPS Mountain Cookout event on the top of Genessee Mountain. It was pretty fantastic to try the Carhartt Woodsman on top of a mountain while listening to blue grass with 100 friends old and new.
Overall the trip was a success! Thank you to The Great American Beer Festival, New Holland Brewing, Carhartt, and all who helped make this beer adventure possible!
