[Brew-list] GABF Report

[John Masterson]

Howdy all,

Photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/magnafix/sets/72157607894752438/


My report:

The Great American Beer Festival in downtown Denver is big. Really big. 
And they have a thing or two to learn about crowd operations. We arrived 
15 minutes after the doors opened and the line to enter was about a mile 
a long. A mile, that's right. It took 15 minutes to walk to the end of 
the line, and then retrace our steps over 45 minutes to get inside.

Once we were in, all was well, though I was a little overwhelmed the 
first 30 minutes or so. With 2,300 beers to choose from, how do you 
start? What reasonable attack plan can possibly be formulated?

I talked over the options with my parents, who rode their Harley to the 
event from Texas to meet me and bought me the event ticket for my 
upcoming birthday.

* Multi-state: try to have a beer from every state
* Linelessness: try beers at tables with no line
* Bikini-clad pourers: that might have been a nice strategy but there 
were none.
* Ingredient scavenger hunt: Try the really creative beers
* Gradual progression: Blonde to Amber to Pale Ale to IPA to Oktoberfest 
to Porter to Barleywine?
* Special releases: Seekout the big breweries and see what special stuff 
they have. Sam Adams was serving their 25%ABV Utopia!
* BIG beers: have fewer samples of huge beers.
* Cool names: "Dragon's Milk" attracted me.


I saw guys there with notebooks and such, taking copious notes on each 
one-ounce sample and checking breweries off their lists. I decided that 
might interfere with the fun factor for me, so I just drank a lot of 
beer, using a little of each of the strategies above.

After a few delightful blonde ales, Kolchs, and hefs from various 
Colorado breweries, I went with the linelessness strategy for a while, 
and then went BIG beer hunting. A few highlights I dimly remember:

* a ginger and lemongrass blonde that wasn't very beer-like but was 
delicious.
* a 10% oak-aged Lambic that was complicated and awesome.
* Dragon's Milk, another big oak-aged beer.
* A belgian strong dark aged in brandy barrels was incredible.
* lots of "double" and "imperial" IPAs were fun and belong in my kegerator.


We finished the night with a 10-minute judging training session with a 
certified judge who flew in from London. He told us to smell the hops 
and my mom put a handful in her mouth. Good fun.

Anyway -- a good time was had by all, and once I shake off this 
fuzzy-headed headache I might have additional recollections.


-JM