Its taken me a few days to finally get around to writing up a summary of this year's
Great American Beer Festival. I needed some time to recover and return to a more normal lifestyle again.
Although we didn't get any medals, its always great to see wins for breweries from Texas. It was also the largest attendance of Texas breweries which hopefully helped people realize that we don't all drink
Shiner Bock and
Lone Star. Its old news by now, but here are the Texas winners:
Gold (Kellerbier/Zwickelbier) -
Hell In Keller by
Uncle Billy's Brew & QueGold (Munich Style Helles) -
Summer Pils by
Saint Arnold Brewing Silver (German-Style Wheat Ale) -
Weizenbock by
The Covey Restaurant and BrewerySilver (Belgian-Style Strong Specialty Ale) -
100 by
The Covey Restaurant and BreweryThe full list of winners is available at the
Great American Beer Festival website.
We arrived on Wednesday and after checking in to the hotel and convention, we headed down to the
Wynkoop Brewery for the brewers gathering. Its almost like a mini festival with beers from various breweries available at different stations spread around inside. Since its industry only, its a great opportunity to chat with other brewery folk and you always run into people you haven't seen since last year's festival. Once that started to wind down, we wandered over to the
Falling Rock Tap House which was a complete madhouse as it usually is during the festival. Its a great place to have a beer, just not during the GABF. However, we fought our way up to the bar and grabbed a few beers (always get two at a time, you don't want to wait again). I also got the chance to meet Amy and Tim Brady from
Here For The Beer website which has some great video coverage of the festival.
On Thursday was my annual
"Rock Bottom Summit". Basically, every year on the Thursday of the convention week, I meet some friends from Denver at the
Rock Bottom Brewery for lunch... and typically stay for about six hours. An amusing story that a friend likes to tell is that one year he called me shortly after I got to the Rock Bottom to say that he was driving to the Houston airport to catch his flight to Denver. And when he finally arrived in Downtown Denver, we were still at the Rock Bottom.
The festival opened that night and I split my time between wandering the booths to sample winners from last year and pouring beer samples at our booth.
Independence Brewing had its first booth at the GABF convention this year and it was fun talking to people about the brewery and the beer. Lots of current and former Austin residents came to chat as well as those who just know someone in Austin and wanted to say hi. The convention hall was larger this year and although there were all the same long lines at all the same booths, it was a lot easier to walk around inside.
Friday was another big day with several great events. Every year there is an industry event held at the
Sandlot at
Coors Field. The Sandlot (renamed to
Blue Moon Brewing Company at the Sandlot) is basically a R&D brewery for Coors and is the place that developed
Blue Moon and other variations of the
Moon brand. Each year the brewmaster picks a particular style and brews different distinct versions of it. This year seemed to be Pilsners, but there were other styles available as well including some rauchebiers. We couldn't stay for all of it this year as a couple of us had tickets for the
Rare Beer Tasting that afternoon (wrap-up of that in a separate post).
General fatigue was starting to set in as we arrived for the Friday evening session. We didn't spend a whole lot of time sampling on the convention floor after getting the opportunity to drink so many amazing beers at the
Rare Beer Tasting. However, we did run into a old hero of mine and got my picture taken with him. George Wendt (Norm on Cheers) wandered into the Draft Lounge at the GABF and sat down at our table. As it turns out, he was there to promote a new book called
Drinking with George: A Barstool Professional's Guide to Beer
After the Friday session wrapped up, we met-up with a few other Texas brewers and wandered down to the
Great Divide Brewery and had a few beers while they were closing up for the night.
Great Divide has really grown and expanded over the past few years and continues to put out some really great beer. We caught a cab back to the hotel and decided that some food was probably a really good idea. Unfortunately, not being from Denver, we had no idea where to get food after midnight in downtown. Otis noticed someone carry a pizza box for
Mary Jane's Pizza which indicated they delivered from 11:00pm to 4:20am. I can't say that it was very good, but no one really cared or noticed at 3:00am.
We were a little slow to get going on Saturday morning. The drinking and standing around for hours and hours on concrete floors at the convention center and bars was starting to wear on everyone. However, this was the day the winners were to be announced so there's always some level of excitement about a potential win. The Saturday afternoon session is usually a little calmer then other sessions. A lot of people are here to watch the results being announced, so its typically quiet around the booths until the ceremony is over and there's a rush to visit the booths that got a win.
Independence Brewing didn't get a win, but we got great feedback at the booth as people sampled the beer. The
Stash IPA and
Convict Hill Imperial Oatmeal Stout where very well liked. The Freestyle Wheat was always popular towards the end of the sessions as people were getting burned out on sampling heavy beers and wanted something light and refreshing.
I had a quick nap and a bite between the afternoon and evening sessions. This was the first Saturday evening session that I had ever attended. I usually skipped the last session, opting for a quieter evening at a local restaurant or bar instead. However, the rest of our group had to head back to Austin that afternoon, so I stayed around to wrap up the booth and pour beer for the thirsty masses. It was surprisingly very busy and not nearly the large "drunkfest" that I had always heard it was. By the Saturday evening session, all the popular and winning beers are typically long gone, but that's not to say that only bad beers are left. There are still hundreds of great beers to sample, you just may not get your first choice. When it was finally over, I made my way back to the hotel and collapsed on the bed, not sure if my feet were still attached to my legs or not.
For me, the GABF is not simply about drinking lots of different beers (although, its obviously a big part of it), its the overall atmosphere of being in place with so many great beers and people who are enthusiastic about those beers. Everywhere you go, people are enjoying good beer and talking about it which I'd say is the overall goal of the festival. If you've never been, I highly recommend going. If you want to start planning now, the
2010 Great American Beer Festival will be Sept 16th ~ 18th.
When I first read about the Rare Beer Tasting, I wondered if it would be worth it. I know its for a good cause and all, but there's already so many great beers at the GABF, do I really need to spend more money to drink even more beer? Then I saw the lineup of the beers scheduled to be at the tasting and I immediately bought tickets. I knew it would sell out and fast. There was only one or two beers on that list that I had ever tasted and those probably weren't even the same beers. Many were barrel-aged or imperial versions of their more common namesake and some were even the last of it that existed.
We had been at the industry party at the Sandlot earlier and arrived at the Wynkoop at around 12:45pm. The line was already a block long, but we were inside within 40 mins. The event was on the second floor and was basically setup the same way as the brewers gathering on Wednesday with the stations pouring beer spread around the edges of the room.
It was our goal to try them all, so we started at table one and moved on from there. I won't lie, there were a few beers that were hard to drink and maybe one or two we almost couldn't. However, if we had more time to sip and enjoy them, we probably would have been able to appreciate those ones a little more. Don't get me 
wrong, we weren't slamming them down (a little difficult with beers that have double-digit ABV), but there was a certain degree of urgency as it was obvious some beers would not last the entire event. At about a third of the way through, the affects could already be felt. It didn't help that some brewers were pretty generous with their pours and there was no way I was pouring out a beer I liked just so that I could sample the next one.
But there wasn't only great beer there, it was also the largest gathering of brewers in the same place at the same time that I've ever seen. As one attendee told me as he was asking Dan Carey from New Glarus Brewing to sign his Rare Beer Tasting Program, its like Comic-Con for the beer world. Hilarious, but he was right. 
Long lines formed at the Dogfish Head pouring station as everyone wanted to talk with Sam Calagione as he poured their beer and Garret Oliver from Brooklyn Brewing couldn't take more then two steps before before asked to have his picture taken (he's always friendly and a snappy dresser). Every which way you turned, legendary brewmasters were pouring beer and talking with people.
