The mob at the Brooklyn Brewery booth
Over the three days, Urban Oyster Co-Founder Dave Naczycz will be posting reports from the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado. Here's the second of his dispatches:
Intro | Day 2 | Day 3
Wow! Never before have so many brewers been gathered in one place, and the effect was a little overwhelming. Thousands were gathered outside the doors of the Denver Convention Center anticipating the opening of the festival at 5:30pm. When the doors did open there was a cheer so loud you thought you were at a Broncos game, not a beer festival. Since the festival sold 49,000 tickets in just a few days, one could infer that it has become just as popular as the NFL.
I grabbed my tasting glass and headed into the melee. The festival is arranged geographically with brewers from different regions like the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Rocky Mountains grouped together. I quickly breezed by the Mid-Atlantic section, which included New York City, to see who had come to the Festival. The only NYC brewery in attendance was Brooklyn Brewery, and they were slammed. Brewmaster Garrett Oliver along with other Brooklyn Brewery folks, including our friends Erin and Carla, were pouring Brooklyn Local 1, Local 2, Black Ops, and Sorachi Ace. Garrett was also signing copies of his new book, The Oxford Companion to Beer. It was great to see that they were clearly one of the most popular breweries at the festival along with Dogfish Head, New Belgium, Sierra Nevada, and others.
Intro | Day 2 | Day 3
Wow! Never before have so many brewers been gathered in one place, and the effect was a little overwhelming. Thousands were gathered outside the doors of the Denver Convention Center anticipating the opening of the festival at 5:30pm. When the doors did open there was a cheer so loud you thought you were at a Broncos game, not a beer festival. Since the festival sold 49,000 tickets in just a few days, one could infer that it has become just as popular as the NFL.
I grabbed my tasting glass and headed into the melee. The festival is arranged geographically with brewers from different regions like the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Rocky Mountains grouped together. I quickly breezed by the Mid-Atlantic section, which included New York City, to see who had come to the Festival. The only NYC brewery in attendance was Brooklyn Brewery, and they were slammed. Brewmaster Garrett Oliver along with other Brooklyn Brewery folks, including our friends Erin and Carla, were pouring Brooklyn Local 1, Local 2, Black Ops, and Sorachi Ace. Garrett was also signing copies of his new book, The Oxford Companion to Beer. It was great to see that they were clearly one of the most popular breweries at the festival along with Dogfish Head, New Belgium, Sierra Nevada, and others.
My tasting glass. Note the 1oz pour line
However, I can always get Brooklyn Brewery beer, so I headed over to the Mountain West section to drink local. I tried beers from Red Rock Brewing from Salt Lake City. I had their Black Lager, Helles, and Zwickel Lager. They specialize in the lager style and in lighter beers in terms of body and alcohol. One of the reasons they have those beers is due to the liquor laws in Utah, which state that a draft beer can’t be higher than 4% alcohol by volume. That is fairly low for the craft beer world, but it does create the opportunity to fill a niche that I think is neglected by many craft brewers, which is lighter, lower alcohol beers that many would find more drinkable than the imperial stouts and IPAs that dominate the industry.
I slid over to Renegade Brewing Company of Denver, which opened a mere three months ago. They were featuring a Rye IPA called Ryeteous! Local New Yorkers will no doubt recognize the resemblance to our own Sixpoint Craft Ales Righteous Rye. While the Renegade Brewing version was very good, it wasn’t nearly as well done as the Sixpoint version. Sixpoint had a more balanced hop profile and a richer malt character that appealed to me more. However I wish the guys at Renegade good luck in growing their new brewery. They also made a Poblano Amber, which was an amber ale spiced with peppers. The spice was very prominent, and I felt like it was a beer that captured the local flavor of the food out here (I had Mexican for lunch).
I slid over to Renegade Brewing Company of Denver, which opened a mere three months ago. They were featuring a Rye IPA called Ryeteous! Local New Yorkers will no doubt recognize the resemblance to our own Sixpoint Craft Ales Righteous Rye. While the Renegade Brewing version was very good, it wasn’t nearly as well done as the Sixpoint version. Sixpoint had a more balanced hop profile and a richer malt character that appealed to me more. However I wish the guys at Renegade good luck in growing their new brewery. They also made a Poblano Amber, which was an amber ale spiced with peppers. The spice was very prominent, and I felt like it was a beer that captured the local flavor of the food out here (I had Mexican for lunch).
Free State Brewing Co.
Finally I stopped by the Great Divide Brewing Co. booth. Great Divide beers are available in NYC, and many of you may have tried them before. I had their Titan IPA and their Rumble IPA. The Titan was interesting in that it utilized Simcoe, Amarillo, and Centennial hops. Not a Cascade to be found. The flavor made it distinctive from both East and West Coast IPAs and made a strong case for the increasing local character of craft brewing. This was clearly and Mountain IPA. In my next post I’ll talk more about the “localness” of beer and how that is playing out in the beer industry. Oh, and before I leave Great Divide, they had an excellent Saison called Collette that was just the right amount of tartness. All of these beers are distributed in NYC, but you might have trouble finding Collette as we are past the end of Saison season.
The last brewery I’ll mention is the Free State Brewing Company from Lawrence, Kansas. I visited them as a personal pilgrimage. This was the first craft beer I drank in my life. It happened in 1994 on a visit to a friend at the University of Kansas, and he took us to Free State which did, and still does, operate a brew pub in town. That experience changed my beer drinking life and set me on the path which has led to the beer tours and beer tastings that I now lead for Urban Oyster. I think that everyone probably has that “beer life changing” moment, and I always like to think that some have had it on an Urban Oyster tour. At Free State I tried their Ad Astra Ale, which was in all likelihood the beer I had 17 years ago, and it was a delicious, easy-drinking pale ale. Their C4 Imperial IPA was also very good. It was very hoppy, and the hops still dominated the beer, which was refreshing at that moment and somewhat unusual in the Imperial IPAs, where the maltiness is usually significant enough to balance with the hops.
After Free State I ran into Josh Shaffner who organizes New York Craft Beer Week, and he led me on a trek to numerous breweries where we were trying beer so fast I didn’t have time to take notes. This resulted in some end of the night fuzziness in the head, as I’m sure everyone can appreciate.
The last brewery I’ll mention is the Free State Brewing Company from Lawrence, Kansas. I visited them as a personal pilgrimage. This was the first craft beer I drank in my life. It happened in 1994 on a visit to a friend at the University of Kansas, and he took us to Free State which did, and still does, operate a brew pub in town. That experience changed my beer drinking life and set me on the path which has led to the beer tours and beer tastings that I now lead for Urban Oyster. I think that everyone probably has that “beer life changing” moment, and I always like to think that some have had it on an Urban Oyster tour. At Free State I tried their Ad Astra Ale, which was in all likelihood the beer I had 17 years ago, and it was a delicious, easy-drinking pale ale. Their C4 Imperial IPA was also very good. It was very hoppy, and the hops still dominated the beer, which was refreshing at that moment and somewhat unusual in the Imperial IPAs, where the maltiness is usually significant enough to balance with the hops.
After Free State I ran into Josh Shaffner who organizes New York Craft Beer Week, and he led me on a trek to numerous breweries where we were trying beer so fast I didn’t have time to take notes. This resulted in some end of the night fuzziness in the head, as I’m sure everyone can appreciate.
Josh Schaffner of NY Craft Beer Week and his friend Ian. The picture is a little blurry, much like myself at the time.
I’ll be back to you tomorrow with more news and brews from GABF 2011. If you are here at the festival, send us a tweet @urbanoyster and we can meet up to try some beer.
Read Dave's other blog posts from GABF: Intro | Day 2 | Day 3
For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment. If you would like to follow this blog, subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for the Urban Oyster email newsletter. All photos courtesy Dave Naczycz.
Read Dave's other blog posts from GABF: Intro | Day 2 | Day 3
For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment. If you would like to follow this blog, subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for the Urban Oyster email newsletter. All photos courtesy Dave Naczycz.