"Great American Beer Festival" 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.

At first, beer and ice cream seems an off-putting combination -- not unlike drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth. And I'll admit, Budweiser mixed with a scoop of Rocky Road sounds nauseating. But when done properly, like carefully pairing a stout's roasty character with chocolate, beer and ice cream create a divine dessert -- the bar by way of the freezer aisle.

During last weekend's Great American Beer Festival, Denver's Sweet Action Ice Cream joined in the boozy fun with the Denver Beer (Ice Cream) Fest: six unique flavors concocted with Colorado beer. So on Thursday, after tippling a couple lunchtime martinis at Le Central, I poked into the pub, er, ice cream shop and sampled the mash-ups.

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.

Homer Simpson longs for beer. Photo: rodricg, Flickr

Homer Simpson (OK, a human in Homer duds) will cut the ceremonial opening ribbon at this year's Great American Beer Festival, event founder Charlie Papazian revealed on his blog this week. "Giving Homer Simpson a pair of scissors at a beer festival is pretty risky," Papazian quipped, "but it might be worth the risk if we can teach him a bit about respecting beer."

Can Homer learn to "respect" beer? He's spent 20 years drinking Duff, Springfield's fictional Budweiser-esque macro equivalent, in quantities a live-action human would consider excessive. For years though, the GABF -- which takes places in Denver this September -- has served to introduce new stateside brews to folks from all over the world. As appreciation for craft brewing has grown in recent years, so has festival attendance. Part of that growth must come from people who previously preferred big-time brands. Maybe Homer will be the next convert?

Just as long as he doesn't get stuck drinking Fudd (the rival beer drunk by denizens of neighboring Shelbyville)!

Source

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]