"beer festival" news and stories

• Seven soup recipes from seven new cookbooks help Denver residents stay warm this season.
• Seared scallops, salad and rib-eye are the way to go at the newly revamped Simms Steakhouse.
• The Colorado Beer Festival descends on Colorado Springs this Saturday, and offers more than 70 beers to sample, as well as a designated-driver program.
• The Wynkoop Brewery will hold its own Beers of the Year mini-festival on Saturday, also.
• Dublin-made cream liqueur Coole Swan, which gets its name from Yeats' poem "The Wild Swans of Coole," is finally for sale in Colorado, and one food writer -- who claims it's the finest cream liqueur he's ever tasted -- couldn't be happier.
• A "gastropub" opens in Cherry Creek, inspiring food critic Tucker Shaw to explore the etymology of the word.
• A knife-wielding blogger discovers the bounty of the duck.

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]

On Wednesday, Charlie Papazian had a great post on Examiner.com providing advice on "surviving beer festivals." He would be one to know: He's the founder of the Great American Beer Festival.

Late September and early October are traditionally beer fest months, not least in part because of the granddaddy of them all, Oktoberfest. Some of Charlie's advice is self-explanatory, like rule #1: "Know your limits." But my favorite rule is #6: "Dump the beer."

Part of the fun of a beer festival is trying something new. Much of the time brewers are even trying to push products on us we might otherwise not try at all. Yet still people feel obligated to suck down suds they don't like. Part of knowing your limits is knowing when you're tossing back a brew just because it's in your cup. Don't do it! A "taster glass" is meant for just that: a taste. If you don't want the rest, dump it out. But be a respectful patron too and don't waste the breweries product for their sake and for the sake of your fellow fest-goers who might have a different opinion than you. If you're not sure you're going to enjoy something, make sure you only get a taste and consider going back for seconds later.

Check out the rest of the rules here and tell us if you have any beer festival plans for the fall in the comments. You can find me at the NY Brewfest next Friday.