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Beerfest
383 breweries, 1,668 beers, one sample cup to try them all
By Joe Nguyen
nguyejos@mscd.edu

Photo by Jenn LeBlanc • jkerriga@mscd.edu From left: Greg Kus, Lance DeBar and Casey Kjolhede of New Belgium Brewery at the 25th annual Great American Beer Fest held Sept. 28-30 at the Convention Center in Denver.

It’s beer o’clock in Denver.

The alcoholic beverage flows freely into plastic taster cups as mobs of people move from booth to booth, sampling a seemingly endless assortment of brews. As the night goes on, the noise and intoxication levels rise. Without warning, the crowd becomes eerily quiet as an unmistakable sound is heard.

Klank.

It’s the sound of someone dropping a plastic sampling cup. All eyes turn to the unlucky soul. Then, as quickly as the silence descends, the crowd points and unleashes a deafening “Ohhhhh!”

Welcome to the 25th Great American Beer Festival.

On the weekend of Sept. 28-30, thousands of beer drinkers, from novices to connoisseurs, filled the Colorado Convention Center for the festival.

The three-day event featured a wide variety of beers from across the United States, from traditional ales and lagers to innovative smoke- and coffee-flavored beers. It was an opportunity for microbreweries such as Pug Ryan’s and Otter Creek to share the same stage as beer giants Budweiser and Coors.

“It’s a showcase to what beer is about,” Lakefront Brewery representative Adam Nan said.

This year 383 breweries featured 1,668 different beers for public consumption, and tickets for all three days were sold out. The festival’s website reported an estimated 41,000 people were in attendance during the weekend. This breaks the record of 29,500 in 2005.

“It was a lot of fun to see so many people who love craft beers,” San Luis Valley Brewing Company owner Angie Graber said. This was the first year Graber’s brewery participated in the festival.

Though most of the featured beers stayed near the typical 4 to 6 percent alcohol range, some were much higher. The most potent brew at the festival was Samuel Adams’ Utopias 2005, which contained 25 percent alcohol.

“(The Eye of the Hawk Select Ale) is 8 percent alcohol, but you wouldn’t know it,” Mendocino Brewing Company master brewer Don Barkley said before letting loose an evil laugh. Mendocino is based in Ukiah, Calif., and was one of the 69 breweries from California present at the festival.

In addition to the plethora of beers, teams of chefs and brewmasters showed audience members how to complement various dishes with the perfect beer at the Brewers Studio Pavilion located in the center of the convention center.

Tom Dalldorf, publisher of Celebrator Beer News, moderated a forum titled “Inside the Brewers Studio,” during which he interviewed a number of brewing experts from various breweries around the country.

One of the big draws for the yearly festival is its competition, and this year more than 2,400 brews from 452 breweries were entered. The festival hosted 104 judges from nine countries who oversaw 69 different beer categories.

Lakefront owner Russ Klisch was unable to attend the festival this year, and Nan was a last-minute replacement. Nan said he joked with other representatives that this was going to be the year one of their brews would win.

Then Lakefront’s New Grist won the gold medal in the experimental beer category.

“We told (Klisch) that he couldn’t come to the festival anymore,” Nan joked.

By the end of Saturday night, some of the breweries had run out of beer.

“Saturday night was a little bit crazy,” Nan said. “Some of the smaller brewers had packed up and left.”

“We (almost) ran out of all of them,” Graber said. “We were almost out of (Ol’ 169 Oatmeal Stout). If the festival lasted another 10 minutes, we would have been completely out.”

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” And this past weekend spirits were high as thousands gathered for a few hours to forget the problems in their lives and drink away their worries.

Beer patron John Fverst walked around the mountain-states-beer area of the convention center playing a set of bagpipes Friday night. When he approached a booth, volunteer captain Michael Young brought out his own set of bagpipes. The two proceeded to play a duet for the next 10 minutes, drawing a cheering crowd.

“There’s a different vibe every year,” Nan said. “It’s always positive. It’s a new surprise at every festival.”