| Wednesday, September 28. I land in Denver with dozens of brewers and beer geeks and pile into a taxi with Jeff Botz of BJ’s Restaurants, Matt Salie of Big Sky Brewing, and Steve and Gail Williams-Shapiro of BeerByBART.com, and the festivities begin! The downtown skyline seems familiar from Broncos games on TV, and it becomes more familiar when we pass Great Divide Brewing on the way in. Unloading and checking in is dusty, dry work. Time for a beer, we’re thinking!
First stop: the Colorado Convention Center. There is a 40-foot bear sculpture leaning against one glass wall, peering in, but the building I enter for check-in looks more like a giant conditioning tank. From there it’s a semishort walk (let’s talk about the thin Denver air!) to Great Divide Brewing and that beer I’ve been craving. I sample three IPAs, including a barrel-aged batch. Great stuff!
Later in the evening, at the brewer’s reception, Jeff and I stand in line with GABF founder and Brewers Association President Charlie Papazian and Festival Director Nancy Johnson. Yes, even the big shots stand in line! The reception is held at Wynkoop Brewing Company, Colorado’s first brewpub, owned by John Hickenlooper, former Denver mayor and current state governor. Beer people grow large in Colorado.
I know a few hundred beer industry folk, but there are thousands roaming the streets of Denver. Evening beer events abound downtown, and lines for the better ones snake around corners. Our industry is growing at an astounding rate!
Thursday, September 29. Jeff and I run into Pete Slosberg, the craft brewing pioneer best known for Pete’s Wicked Ale. He is on his way to Fort Collins for a brewery tour and asks if we would like to join him. We start toward Fort Collins, stopping first at Avery Brewing Company in Boulder. The taproom is open when we arrive at 9:30 a.m., and the ’tenders are just starting their routine, albeit a bit earlier than usual, for GABF week. The day’s beer list includes cask editions of Old Jubilation Ale and Hog Heaven barley wine. After a few samples, the three of us move on.
| "I have never seen so many breweries in one place, all grouped by region so one could sample the local brews from anywhere in the country." |
The GPS takes us right to Oskar Blues’ Longmont taproom, the Tasty Weasel, where a younger crowd enjoys beer in the canning room warehouse with “Brewskee-Ball” and pinball games to entertain them while they drink their Dale’s Pale Ale. The brewer taps a cask of English mild while we are there. Our timing is good.
Next stop is Left Hand Brewing Company, also in Longmont. We learn from a few of the guys at the bar that a new brewery is open in Fort Collins that we have to try. In the meantime, we sample a few cask ales, including 400 Pound Monkey English-style IPA and Wake Up Dead Imperial Stout. Great beers and a comfortable pub in which to hang. If I lived nearby, I’d be a regular.
We drive to Fort Collins and find that new brewery we’d heard about. Funkwerks consists of a tiny tasting room attached to a tiny brewery on a side street. We order their two sample sets and a third set from a contract brewery called Crooked Stave. Pete picks up the first Funkwerks brew, the Saison, and his eyes go wide. “Wow!” he says. When Pete says “Wow,” I take notice. The beer is spectacular, with just the right amount of subtle yeasty background, and it finishes clean.
We try all 11 beers in the three flights and are impressed all around. Pete asks if we can speak with the brewer, and we are ushered back into the tiny brewery where owner-brewer Gordon Schuck is working. Schuck was a medal-winning homebrewer who decided he wanted to make beer for a living. He attended the Siebel Institute in Chicago and opened his brewery with a partner only nine months before our visit. Schuck specializes in farmhouse-style brews — lots of dry, barrel-aged, bacteria-induced sours and saisons. Quite a find!
From Funkwerks it’s a five-minute drive to Odell Brewing Company, Pete’s actual destination of the day, where owner-brewer Doug Odell takes us on a private tour. In the taproom, we run into a friend of Pete’s — Cassio Piccolo, owner of Frangó, a multitap bar in Brazil — and two brewers from a Brazilian brewery called Amazon. With Cassio translating the Portuguese, the tour begins.
Doug Odell has been busy. He opened his large, regional-size brewery in 1989 and hopes to crack the million-barrel barrier next year. He recently upgraded from standard filtration to whirlpool centrifuge clarification — an expensive step, at $500,000, but one that will take him to that next level. Doug samples a few barrel-aged brews with us in the conditioning room and a couple more once we arrive back at the taproom. He is a very gracious host and one heck of a brewer.
We have to show our new South American friends Funkwerks, so we finish the day’s tour there with another set of samples before heading back to Denver.
The GABF hasn’t even started yet, and Jeff and I have already had one of the best beer days we’ve ever experienced! The Thursday evening opening session is all I expected and more. I have never seen so many breweries in one place, all grouped by region so one can sample the local brews from anywhere in the country.
I am familiar with most of the West Coast and Pacific breweries, but once we move over an aisle, it’s all new! Each booth serves four to six beers on average, and there are hundreds of booths totaling over 2,000 beers. Even going full steam ahead with one-ounce pours, even working all four sessions, there is no way to sample them all. Larger breweries have end-cap booths with fancy decorations, and many have giveaways of some sort. They all serve wonderful beer, all in hopes of winning a shiny GABF medal, the Holy Grail of American craft brewing.
Friday, September 29. Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies, has its own microbrewery, the SandLot. We are allowed in for a sampling of SandLot brews, including a higher-gravity version of Blue Moon called Honey Moon. Hot dogs with kraut and mustard, nachos and cold cuts keep the rumbling at bay. I want to see a game in this park; it’s beautiful AND they serve SandLot beer!
The annual Alpha King Challenge is judged at the local multitap, Falling Rock Tap House. Jeff Bagby of Pizza Port in Carlsbad, Calif., wins it for the second year in a row and for the third time overall. He struts around in his King Tut winner’s headgear with his scepter, grinning like a kid.
| Evening beer events abound downtown, and lines for the better ones snake around corners. Our industry is growing at an astounding rate! |
The Alpha King Challenge (“alpha” refers to the alpha acids in the hop flower that contribute bitterness to beer) was named in honor of Three Floyds Brewing’s Alpha King Pale Ale and was created to choose the best-tasting, most balanced brew with a minimum of 60 IBUs. Each year this award has grown in importance, to the point that it almost rivals a GABF medal. There can be only one Alpha King: Hail Bagby! Carlsbad also won a half-dozen medals and Large Brewpub and Large Brewpub Brewer of the Year honors at the GABF awards.
Friday’s GABF session takes up where Thursday’s left off. I start at the Pro-Am table, a contest in which an American Homebrewers Association member pairs with a professional brewer to make a batch of beer on a large scale. The resulting products are served at the GABF and judged for medals. It’s the only way an amateur brewer can win a GABF medal. This year there are 86 entries vying for the three available medals. The winner of 2011 gold is Before Capone, a recipe created by AHA member Tom Gardner and brewed by Brewmaster Dennis O’Harrow at C. B. & Potts Restaurant & Brewery of Westminster, Colo.
Saturday, September 30. Two sessions today, and I am trying to find that one wonderful beer from a place I’ve never heard of. It’s 1:00 p.m. and the start of the awards ceremony. Charlie Papazian once again has his hand wrapped in a bandage to protect him from overly exuberant hand-shaking winners. The list of 83 categories plus breweries of the year and Pro-Am makes for a long list of arm pumps for ol’ Charlie.
I’m particularly interested in winners from “my” breweries in Northern California and Hawaii, and also those visited on this trip … and I’m not disappointed. Of the breweries visited, Oskar Blues wins three medals, and The Sandlot picks up a double play. Wynkoop and Odell each earn one. And the tiny brewery on the side street, only nine months in business, Funkwerks, wins a silver for that wonderful Saison. I guess the judges said “Wow!” too.
Of “my” local breweries, San Francisco’s 21st Amendment picks up a pair of gold medals; Marin Brewing wins a gold, and so does Anderson Valley Brewing. Magnolia dominates the best bitter category, with a silver and a bronze. Mad River garners a silver, as does FireHouse, Napa Smith, Sierra Nevada and Maui Brewing. FiftyFifty, Black Diamond, Triple Rock, Bear Republic, Eel River and Iron Springs each earn a bronze!
Congratulations to all of the winners, and for those who didn’t get to walk the stage this year, the 2012 Great American Beer Festival will be held October 11–13. Let the brewing begin! |
