Great American Beer Festival (GABF) Recap

Ya ya ya…I know, this report is late, so fire me.

What can I say, it is amazing how busy one unemployed person can be...

GABF was the weekend of Sept. 24-25-26
Four sessions, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening.
I have learned my lesson long ago. I can last three of the four sessions, but by Saturday evening, I am tired, cranky, drunk/hungover or somewhere in between. Saturday evening also is highly resembling off a college frat party with 15,000 participants. Considering I loathed the Greek life in college. There is no reason I would want to return to those times.
Especially after sampling beers for three days straight.

While I am here, have some GABF Stats:
49,000 Attendees
3,308 Beers in the GABF Competition
3,000 Volunteers (including yours truly)
495 Breweries in the Competition
132 Judges from 10 countries
The top five medal winning states were: CO (45), CA (39), OR (22), WA (13), PA (12)

The first night (Thursday) I poured for Mammoth Brewery, from…

Wait, I’ll let you guess.

Give up?

They are from Mammoth California. Shocking huh?

Pouring for Mammoth was like eating vanilla ice cream, in a white room while wearing all white clothes. Yeah sure your eating ice cream, but talk about booooorrrring. The beer was alright, but the personality, or lack there of, the brew masters and brewery reps left a little, ok. A lot to be desired. In their defense, this was their first appearance at GABF…maybe no one told them about the ‘be cool’ policy.
I used all the interpersonal skills I had and in the first hour all I learned was the brewermaster and his wife were married and he runs. Yeah great you’re a brewmaster, so are 500 other people here. Your not that special.
Oh yeah and you’re a runner? Big deal.

When I asked the brewmaster to tell me about his beers so I knew what to tell the patrons, he replied with “oh, do you know anything about beer?”
I wanted to reply “No, I just like to come here for the cool volunteer t-shirt”
Instead I was nice and replied “oh a little bit”

Idiot!

I was over it.

I was not going to waste my time to get in the good graces of this brewery. I poured their beer and drank my share and enjoyed the festival.

I treated it like a bad date. Have as much fun as possible and at the end…move on

At least we had Mister Sexy in our area...


The next night I was determined to pour for a “fun” brewery. So this time I chose Kona Brewery out of…

Wait, lets play this game again, I’ll let you guess.
Give up?

Yup, Hawaii. (good job!)

Of course they will be fun. They live in Hawaii for Christ’s sake. I was right.


Rich, Wendy, and the other guy”(who I feel like an idiot I can’t remember his name and he is the head brew master--DUH!) They were all a blast.. And bonus their beer rocked! My favorite was the Coco Loca, a Coconut Brown Ale. Oh my delicious!!! Tasted like roasted coconut and made me want to run away to the islands for good.

Everyone else at the festival thought the same thing, there was a constant pour of that beer for the first two sessions and we ran out mid Saturday afternoon. I am glad to report I pretty much drank that exclusively until it ran out. Then I switched to their Pipeline Porter. Another amazingly yummy beer.


Since they were such fun and had such good beer I also poured for them on Saturday.
As a side story: Saturday afternoon we all were visiting and came to realize Rich, Wendy and I all lived in Steamboat at the same time and another lifetime ago I used to serve them $1.99 steaks and they remembered by big shaggy mutt “Pablo”. It is a small world after all.

Bonus, If I decide to move to Kona Hawaii, Rich and Wendy said they would gladly hire me to pour beer in the tasting room/bar.


Tempting, VERY Tempting…