The Beer Hunters Dan Taylor Senior and Junior covered the Great American Beer Fest this year. The fest was great and all the additional places we visited in the greater Denver area were just as fun. Cheers, hope you enjoy.
HISTORY OF GABF
This is the 42nd Great American Beer Festival. It began in 1982 in Boulder with 42 Breweries and had 900 attendees. The picture above is from the first GABF. The first time a beer caused a big stir, was 40 years ago in 1984.
The festival had moved to Denver, and craft brewer Bert Grant had brought his Imperial Stout. It was the darkest, thickest, hoppyist beer anyone had ever tasted. And as Charlie said in our short film on GABF, they ever had such a long line for one beer. Extreme beer was born. The first big change in the festival was in 1987 when they began to judge beers by categories (that year they had 12) and in each category gave a gold, silver and bronze medal. The categories back then were pretty wide open, for example Ale included barleywine, a brown ale and a pale ale. Prior to 1987 they had a consumer preference poll where all attendees voted for their favorite beer, crowning the beer Best Beer in America. Sam Adams lager won the first one in 1985. It became apparent right away that winning a medal at GABF was a marketing blitz. As the medal system evolved, they added certified beer judges for each style, to create a more objective evaluation of the beers. Which brings us to today they judge over 8000 beers in 102 different beer styles. It still an honor to most brewers if they win a GABF medal, as well as creating an standard of brewing that inspires most craft brewers. Cheers to that!
KICKOFF AT OSCAR BLUES
We kicked off the fest at one of our favorite Colorado Craft breweries - Oscar Blues, at their Denver brewpub. It was a media kickoff party where we hung out with brewers and had some great beer and food. We talked with several brewers including Mythmaker brewing from Fort Collins Colorado. We really liked the name of the brewery and met Tom the owner/head brewer who we discussed the ins and outs of smoked beer, myself and him being fans of the style, as well as creative brewing in general. He has a smoked Marzen on for the fall as well as a nice lineup of interesting and creative beers. We definitely will plan a visit there in the near future. Old 121 Brewhouse head brewer Sam Nicholas had his ESB (Extra Special Bitter) as one of the beers on tap at Oscar Blues for the party, it was the hit beer in our opinion and World Beer Cup judges agreed giving it a Gold medal.
BRUNCH WITH BOSTON BEER
On Friday morning we attended a brunch with Jim Koch and Sam Calagione at West Saloon in the beautifully Kittredge Building in downtown Denver. The inside is as beautiful as the outside featuring the classic warm and inviting English Pub style.
The food was outstanding and along with serving Dogfish Head Pumkin and other favorites of the hosting breweries. We were treated to a Sam Adams Utopia.
Utopia is one of the strongest beers in the world coming in at 28% ABV, it is barrel aged in five different barrels including bourbon, ruby port, and carcavelos casks, then finished in scotch and plated whiskey casks. Perhaps the most complex beer on the planet.
Jim Koch and Sam Calglioni both spoke to the group of largely brewers and a few media (like us). The theme of both talks was how innovation and creativity are still the drivers of the craft beer industry, including some of the newer non-beer products. It was fun for us to hear two of the best craft brewers who have been involved in craft beer as long as we have, and are still very passionate about their products.
THE FESTIVAL
The 42nd Great American Beer Fest was held in Denver from October 10 thru 12. It is the largest beer festival and beer competition in the United States. This year 1,869 breweries entered 8,869 beers in the 102 beer style categories that were being judged. There were 326 medals awarded and 273 medal winning breweries.
Some of the Gold Medal winners by Style
American Fruit - Hey Girl, Hey, Star Hill Beer Hall, Richmond VA
Fruit Wheat - Yankee Doodle Shandy, River Bluff Brewing, St. Joseph, MO
Pumpkin - Great Pumpkin, Elysian Brewing Co., Seattle, WA
Chocolate - Fudge Sickles, Fort George Brewery, Astoria, OR
Strong Porter - Jeff’s Baltic Porter, Green Cheek Beer Co, Oceanside, CA.
Experimental Beer - Great Wave Sake Lager, MAP Brewing Co, Bozeman, MT
Wood and Barrel Aged - Ghoul Fuel-Rum Diaries Edition, Bull and Bush Brewery, Denver CO
Wood and Barrel Aged Strong - Bass Clef, Audi Graph Beer Co, Los Angeles, CA
Wood and Barrel Aged Strong Stout, Western Justice, Westbound & Down Brewery, Idaho Springs, CO
Smoke - Smoke and Embers, New Belgium Brewing, Fort Collins, CO
American Cream Ale - Was Angeles, Unita Brewing Co, Salt Lake City, UT
American Amber Lager, Bateman Bier, Greenstar Brewing, Chicago,IL
Munich Style Helles, Helles, von Trapp Brewing, Stowe, VT
German Style Oktoberfest, Festbier, Glenwood Canyon Brewing Co, Glenwood Springs, CO
German Style Maerzen, Pleasantbrau Oktoberfest, Soul Brewing Co, Pleasantville, NY
German Dark Lager, Schwarz Wolf, Greywolf Brewing, Norco, CA
Bock, Pan is Alive, IMBIB Custom Brews, Reno, NV
German Style Doppelbock, Eisbock, Northbound Smokehouse Brewpub, Minnesota, MN
German Wheat Ale, Weizenbock, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, Mills River, NC
English Mild or Bitter, Distinguished Fellow, Project 9 Brewing Co, Seattle, WA
Extra Special Bitter, Pub Ale, Pilot Brewing Co, Charlotte, NC
English Ale, Kittos Pale Ale, Kittos Brewing, Salt Lake City, UT
Scottish Style Ale, Doc McLoughlin, Oregon City Brewing Co, Oregon City, OR
Irish Style Red, Coppermind, Denver Beer Co, Lowery Field Denver, CO
English Style Brown Ale, Black Cats, Streetside Brewery, Cincinnati, OH
American Style Brown Ale, Who’s that Brown, Tarantula Hill Brewing, Thousand Oaks, CA
American Stout, Blackside Snap, Riip Beer Co, Huntington Beach, CA
Belgian Witbier, Allagash White, Allagash Brewing Co, Portland, ME
Classic Saison, Dogwood Saison, Devils Backbone Brewing, Basecamp Roseland, VA
Belgian Style Strong Speciality Ale - Kroon, Wallenpaupack Brewing Co, Hawley, PA
Belgian Style Abbey Ale, LMM Dubbel II, Lone Man Mountain Brewing Co, Driftwood. TX
Stout, Correspondent, Wander Brewing, Bellingham, WA
Sweet Stout, Mustachio Milk Stout, Tractor Brewing Co, Albuquerque, NM
Oatmeal Stout, Scaredy Cat, Vintage Brewing Co, Madison, WI
Imperial Stout, Indie Roo, Pizza Port, Imperial Beach, CA
Scotch Ale, Wobbly Traveler, Harbor Brewing Co, Saint Joseph, MI
Barley Wine or Old Ale, Orange Giant, Ecliptic Brewing, Eugene, OR
Juicy or Hazy Pale Ale, Easy Eddy, Big Grove Brewery, Iowa City, IA
Juicy or Hazy Strong Pale Ale, Joyful Intuition, Everywhere Beer Co, Orange, CA
Juicy or Hazy India Pale Ale, Professional Human Being, Ambitious Ales, Long Beach, CA
Pro-Am - Piwo Grodziskie, Kansas City Beer Co and Mike & Stephanie Butler, Kansas City, MO
Collaborative - Twenty-Fold Sword, No Boat Brewing Co & Obelisk Beer Co, Snoqualmie, WA
This year they organized the breweries in the festival by themed areas.
The six main areas included Prost, a German Oktoberfest themed area, Score, a sports themed area, Chill, an area with chairs to sit in and live bands, Blast Off, a space themed area, Fright, a Halloween themed area, and Meet the Brewer, an area manned by the actual brewers of the brewery. The areas allowed you to find breweries by area, but the beers and breweries in the themed areas were random, so I think in the end an alphabetic or geographical categorization would have worked better. We as usual discovered some awesome beers, and most did not win medals, but in our Opinion the best were:
BOSTON BEER - BEER GARDEN FESTWEISSE
Sam Adams collaborated with German brewery Schneider Weiss and created a Fest beer called Beer Garden Festweisse. This was an awesome Oktoberfest beer with great, malt, toast pay and lemon notes. It was as good an Oktoberfest as Sam Adams which we rated as top in the country this year.
NOBO BREWING COMPANY - CINNAMON FRENCH TOAST IMPERIAL STOUT
This was an excellent Imperial Stout that brought home the French toast flavors without drowning out the stout. It did not have a syrupy mouth feel, which I expected but an excellent medium body with a great cinnamon finish. World class beer!
SIERRA NEVADA BREWING - BARREL AGED BEERS
In the two Taylor Beer Hunters' humble opinions, the two absolutely top beers at the fest were Sierra Nevada’s Barrel Aged Trip in the Woods and its Barrel Aged Tiki Torches at Twilight.
Lets start with Trip in the Woods. You are met with cocoa, coconut and brown sugar which begin to fuse together and you are drinking pecan pie. The flavors enhance but do not dominate the barrel aged base. Mid beer you realize the mouth feel is both smooth and light, which is amazing for such a strong beer. It finishes clean with the pecan pie favor lasting through the final drink. World Class without doubt.
Next we encounter Tiki Torches at Twilight. As you can see from the picture above the color is slightly golden, with a decent head. The nose is all barley wine but then you taste it. Rum flavor blends with Pineapple and toasted coconut to produce a complex beer that is hard to describe other than tastes AWESOME. Is it beer ? Is it a mixed drink ? Is it hard liquor? Maybe it’s all of them but it gets five mugs and a world class rating from both of us.
Seek both of these out for the Holidays !
CHEERS!