"GABF" news and stories

After many failed attempts at decoding my scrawled, smudged, stout-stained notes, I've finally deciphered my favorites brews from the Great American Beer Festival. From a German-style gose to a mouth-puckering porter, here are my 10 favorite sudsy discoveries.

Cambridge Brewing: The Colonel Barrel-Aged Wild Porter
For 18 months, this Massachusetts oddball slumbered in oak Buffalo Trace bourbon barrels with wild Brettanomyces yeast. This gives the Colonel a pleasing sour tang, as well as flavors of cherries, barnyard funk, caramel and vanilla.

Epic Brewing: Wheat
Hailing from Utah, this wheat beer is hardly a banana-hinted German hefeweizen. Instead, the hazy, unfiltered Wheat is twangy and zesty, with a bit of sour and citrus to keep you smacking your lips and coming back for more.

Twisted Pine Brewing: Le Petite Saison
The Boulder, Colorado, brewery's take on the traditional French farmhouse ale is lean and light, boasting a floral bouquet and a dryness that makes it an easy drinker either at the dinner table or the bar.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm disgusted by the thought of drinking beer. I just spent four days in Denver sampling upward of 1,000 beers, from resinous IPAs to kölsches as crisp and refreshing as a dip in a lake. The reason for this rampant, um, research is simple: the Brewers Association's 29th annual Great American Beer Festival, which is sort of the Super Bowl of American brewing.

Since brewing pioneer Charlie Papazian founded the festival in 1982, it's mushroomed into America's most massive craft-beer gala. Come fall, some 50,000 beer enthusiasts -- many wearing necklaces made of pretzels to ensure sustenance -- descend on Denver's Colorado Convention Center to sample 450-plus breweries' more than 2,000 beers (about 36,000 gallons of suds, kept cool by 40 tons of ice), each poured in rigorously measured one-ounce increments.

I wanted less. Don't laugh. As a Brooklyn-based beer journalist, I'm bummed that many western breweries never bring their liquids across the Continental Divide. Hence, my four days in Denver served as a crash course on far-flung breweries based in Oregon, Alaska, Nevada and other fine western states. My efforts nearly broke me. Even though I only took dainty sips of beer, it added up, forcing me to make rash decisions -- such as dining on a Double Down late one evening.

I hate to beat the Great American Beer Festival to death, but as "the biggest selection of American beers ever gathered together on the globe," it was certainly a news worthy event. And those of you who have taken a peek at the winners' list know the results can take some time to sort through.

Which is why Brian Kolesar has done us a great service by breaking down the results of this year's fest and giving us "a few numbers to ponder." As he so eloquently understates it, "a mere 230 medals were awarded to 142 different breweries/brewpubs across 81 categories." Did I mention the GABF is the Guinness World Record Holder for beers tapped in one location?

Eleven breweries or brewpubs brought home four or more medals: MillerCoors, Lost Abbey/Pizza Port, Rock Bottom, Firestone Walker, Iron Hill, AleSmith, Anheuser-Busch, Alaskan, Pabst, Pyramid, The SandLot. Though as you can tell, you need to be in it to win it, so many of the above provided plenty of enteries.

Any of the beers on the winner's list near and dear to your heart? Let us know in the comments.

[via The Beer Lounge] [Photo Credit: greatamericanbeerfestival.com]

The winners from this weekend's Great American Beer Festival have been announced. With over 75 categories, the list can be a tad overwhelming, but it still serves as a handy guide to finding great beers of every style, price point and availability.

A few personal thoughts:

• With 104 entries, the American-Style IPA category was the most hotly contested. Legendary brewery Russian River took second with their Blind Pig IPA, beat out by Firestone Walker's Union Jack IPA. Scoring two golds, a silver and a bronze, Firestone Walker appears to be the GABF's go-to brewer in the pale ale department. Unfortunately, if you don't live in California or Nevada you might have trouble finding one.
• In the least hotly contested department, check out Category 29: American-Style Specialty Lager. I seriously need to find out which 21 beers finished below Busch Ice. My condolences.
  
• Finally, congratulations to Pyramid Breweries for taking home the Mid-Size Brewer of the Year award. My travels up to the Pyramid Brewery in Berkeley, California sparked my love of microbrews at the tender age of... uh, ahem... 21. The gold medal winning Apricot Ale (out of 87 entries in the Fruit or Vegetable Beer category) will always hold a special place in my heart... and liver.

[Photo Credit: beertown.org]

The Great American Beer Festival kicks off today in Denver, Colorado. Featuring over 1800 beers from 400 breweries, those who've made the trip are surely excited.

If you're reading this cursing yourself for being nowhere near the greater Denver area, don't get too down: The festival set a new record this year by selling out two weeks in advance, so if you didn't plan well ahead of time, you'd probably be, literally, locked out in the cold.

Still, if you want to get a taste of the action, grab a six-pack of your favorite brew and live it vicariously via the web:

1. A good place to start is the official Great American Beer Festival page.
2. Follow Draft Magazine on their flight to the fest.
   
3. Or for a more homey approach, check out Hoosier Beer Geek for their GABF roadtrip.
4. Charlie Papazian founded the festival, so he's a good one fill us in on all the pre-fest prep.
   
5. The Brew Lounge provides advice on "How to Tackle the GABF."
6. My Beer Pix hopes to present a live "beercast" from the festival floor on Friday and Saturday.
   
7. Want to know the winners? My Beer Pix's Beermolly purports to be Twittering them as they come in.
8. And it's too late to join this year, but if you want to get really interactive in 2009, try the Beer Fantasy Draught (yes, that is a pun).

[Photo Credit: greatamericanbeerfestival.com]