The Great American Beer Festival (GABF) is kind of like the Super Bowl of beer. Tens of thousands of people make the pilgrimage to Denver every year for this event. It’s a veritable who’s who of the beer world.
American Brewing Company attends every year to represent its brand and compete against other breweries from all over the country in what has become the largest beer competition in the world.
Last week was my first chance to attend the festival. Here are some of my thoughts:
After ascending a three-story escalator and passing through two lines of security, my badge gets punched and I’m handed a taster glass. The convention hall is massive. Rows upon rows of tables make long avenues lined with breweries from all over the country. Large sections are partitioned into geographic regions: Pacific Northwest, Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, New England, and so on.
It is an hour before festival officially begins. Over the course of the next three days, more than 750 breweries will be pouring 3,500 beers for an estimated 60,000 festival-goers. Despite the addition of 90,000 square feet of festival space and the huge number of tickets available, tickets sold out in an hour and 17 minutes.
As I navigate my way to the American Brewing booth, there’s a busy energy around the hall as if people are preparing for a big storm. Structures are erected, wire is taped to the floor, people hammer and prep booths. Banners go up, lights start blinking, projection screens come to life with slideshows and movies. Theatrics seem to be the norm. Each brewery is trying to go bigger and better than the next to try to garner the most attention.
An unintelligible voice is heard over the loud speaker announcing that the doors are opening. Scores of volunteers dressed in blue T-shirts line the booths, more than 3,000 in total, backed by brewers and brewery representatives. All are armed with pitchers of beer.
Then the stream begins. A biblical flood of festival-goers charge into the hall like a marauding army. They head in every direction, some with a strategy to hit all their favorites before the lines get too long, others who just want to drink. After 10 minutes, it becomes hard to move around without bumping into people, lines grow long, and the beer flows.
It’s all a bit overwhelming. The sheer number of people is incredible. All the special props, attractions, vendors and gimmicks are all firing at once. People dance with headphones on in a silent disco. Others get married by a medieval bishop at a temporary cathedral erected by Saint Arnold Brewery. Chefs serve food to costumed attendees, someone belts out Bon Jovi on the karaoke machine and loud cheers of “Oooooooohh!” broke out whenever someone drops a glass. Overstimulation at its max.
We aren’t set up in the special “meet the brewer” section, but I am of the mindset that people who attend these festivals don’t just want to be poured world-class beer from volunteers, but want to talk beer and meet those who make it. Therefore, we make sure to always have a representative from American Brewing behind our booth.
Personally, I thrive on the energy of festivals and talking beer with people who love to know exactly what’s in their favorites and how it was made. So I spend several hours of every session pouring beer and chatting with eager drinkers.
Our first kegs to kick are our newest beers: American Summer Saison and Fall Harvest, our sour biere de garde, the first two beers of our Farm to Farmhouse series. Although we didn’t win any medals in the competition this year — there were 6,700 entries from more than 1,500 different breweries — empty kegs tell me best what the people love.
As for my favorites from this year’s festival, there were three beers that stood out:
1. Allagash Resurgam: A spontaneously fermented sour beer that is fermented only using yeast and microbes that naturally occur in the cool fall air of Portland, Maine. This beer comes across mildly spicey with a sour complexity with hints of berries and buckwheat honey.
2. Lost Abbey Track 8: The base beer for Cuvee de Tomme (an imperial brown ale brewed with raisins and candy syrup) aged in bourbon barrels with cinnamon sticks and dried chillis. It drinks like grandma’s oatmeal raisin cookies fell into grandpa’s bourbon next to a warm fire on a winter evening.
3. Wander Brewing Company Uno Bretto: A 100 percent Brettanomyces fermented beer that can surprise the typical Brett beer lover. The 100 percent Brett fermentation allows this wild yeast to express tropical fruit flavors like pineapple and guava while still maintaining a slight funkiness that people enjoy with Brett beer.
At the end of a long three days of the Great American Beer Festival, I boarded a plane back to Seattle tired but thrilled. With the success of American Brewing’s newest creations at the festival, I know that we’re on the right track.
The third of our season-inspired Farm to Farmhouse series beers comes out next month, Fireside Farmhouse, a winter warmer meets a farmhouse ale, and we are soon releasing an imperial red ale called “Red Blooded American.” We are starting the next exciting chapter for our brewery, and I can gladly say that I am proud to be American!
Adam Frantz is head brewer at Edmonds’ American Brewing Company. Email him at adam@americanbrewing.com.
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