"great american beer festival" news and stories

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]