Great American Beer Festival | 2013 Indiana Medal Winners

The 2013 Great American Beer Festival concluded this past weekend. And once again, Indiana breweries took home medals. More specifically, Sun King, Three Floyds, and RAM collectively won four medals for the Hoosier State:

Category: Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer
Winner: Gold Medal, Sun King for Afternoon Delight Barrel-Aged Dopplebock

Category: Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Stout
Winner: Gold Medal, Three Floyds for Blot Out The Sun Imperial Stout

Category: Field Beer or Pumpkin Beer
Winner: Silver Medal, RAM Restaurant and Brewery - Indianapolis for Anaheim IPA

Category: Imperial IPA
Winner: Silver Medal, Three Floyds for Permanent Funeral









We at Hoosier Beer Geek offer our congratulations to Sun King, Three Floyds, and RAM!

2010 Great American Beer Fest Wrap Up

Where to even begin talking about the Great American Beer Fest. I will begin by saying that I thought the GABF couldn't live up to the hype that others and myself had built it up to be, but I was indeed incorrect about that assumption. My first thought was 49,000 tickets? That isn't really an issue though. There are so many brewers that show up to the GABF and the Denver convention center is so massive that during the Thursday and Saturday day sessions there isn't really a line for any brewers except for a select few. Friday night session and Saturday night session are more highly attended, but even then you can get right up to any table and get a sample without much hassle, but those sessions and those crowds are a little more.....drunk and obnoxious.

I really have to tip my hat to the people behind the Brewers Association and the GABF though. Here are some of the numbers for the beer fest:

49,000 attendees
3400 volunteers that help run the festival
2200 beers in the festival
3500 beers to be judged for competition
largest selection of beer ever on the convention floor

Some of my personal highlights:
Trinity Brewing from Colorado Springs, CO brought some really great beer. I didn't hit many brewers twice, but I think Rod and I hit Trinity no less than 15 times. The Flavor was one of the best beers there as was Old Growth. They were sour style beers that were showcased the talent of the brewer. Some sour beers I've had the brewer tends to have more brett cultures than talent, but these were some of the best sours I've ever had in my life. I am trying my best to trade for one of these beers on the beer websites.

The Bruery from California brought Black Tuesday and Oude Tart. I thought both of those were really tremendous.

Cascade Brewing from Portland, OR is another fantastic purveyor of the power of sour. I loved their kriek, bubonic plague, and Vlad the Imp Aler.

Iron Hill Brewing out of Pennsylvania won a gold metal for their pig iron porter that was really fantastic. I hit them more than once before the awards ceremony because I liked that beer that much.

Someone that I've never heard of before, but now I am considering a trip to Vermont just to hit them up is The Alchemist Pub & Brewery. I had the pleasure to hear a demonstration by owner and head brewer of the Alchemist, John Kimmich. He is serious and passionate about his beer. They only brew about 450 barrels a year, but they do not bottle and they do not allow growler sales. He also took home some hardware from GABF after the awards ceremony. If you are ever in Vermont they are a must hit. I had their double IPA called Ouroboros. It was one of the cleanest tasting DIPA's that I've personally ever tasted. I usually can't drink a great deal of hop bomb style beers, but I could have had several of these in one sitting.

Duck-Rabbit brewing from Farmville, North Carolina: They call themselves the dark beer specialists and I sampled everything they brought. I've had them before but their schwarzbier was tremendous and had reignited my passion for that style.

For my first GABF I couldn't have asked for a better time. Rod luckily was my tour guide the whole time and helped tremendously with knowing where to go. I've read some negative things about the fest, but quite honestly you are going to get that when you get that many people in a room full of beer. I can say that I will never again go to the Saturday night session. Most of the brewers don't show up for that session, people start running out of beer, and the crowd is just there to get as drunk as possible. The other three sessions were really great, but the feel of the last session is just a whole different animal. The city of Denver is a great town and I plan to head back when I can just to check out some other things outside of GABF. I will certainly go back again next year.

2010 Great American Beer Festival - Day 3

On the third day of the Great American Beer Festival, there were two sessions, one Saturday afternoon and one Saturday evening. The two sessions could not be any more different. Saturday afternoon features the awards announcements and is mostly for the brewers and Saturday evening is largely a giant drunkfest. It's unfortunate, but that seems to be the way the festival has evolved. For that reason, we thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon session and only stopped by the evening session to grab a few more tastes of Trinity's The Flavor.  Here is a photo montage to commemorate the final day of GABF.

The famous giant bear peering in to the convention center

The front of the line for the afternoon session

Interesting graphic of the number of microbreweries in each state

The Sierra Nevada guys actually pedaled their trolley to Falling Rock one night - never again!

New Belgium always arrives with 12+ beers available

Tons of interesting Odell beers on tap including Deconstruction and Woodcut #4

Upslope is a hot new brewery in Boulder

These keg guys have been to GABF every year I have!

Dogfish Head had a line all session, every session

Iron Hill has great beers and won a few awards too

Representing Indiana RAM and Upland style

Alaskan brews one of the best smoked porters in the world

Foothills, home of Sexual Chocolate

Lost Abbey and Port Brewing of course had lines

Deschutes began to run out of beer on Saturday

Ted trying to get the secret of Upland lambics

Fat Heads had a great smoke beer and one of this year's Collaborative Evil

Matt is just trying to figure out where to get in on the High Life

Elysian poured my favorite pumpkin beer - Dark O' The Moon

We stopped at Pints Pub after the afternoon session for dinner.  This authentic English pub has a menu full of English food, is brewing 8+ English style ales in the restaurant, is serving proper live ale and houses one of the largest scotch selections in the world.  Needless to say, we had a great dinner!

ESB on nitro

Check out that beautiful scotch!

2010 Great American Beer Festival - Day 2

 I have no idea what this means

Part of our Friday GABF experience included a media tour of Breckenridge's production facility and Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey distillery. While at Breckenridge, we enjoyed samples of Agave Wheat, Vanilla Porter and Lucky U IPA. We learned a few things too, after all, why invite the media out if you're not going to fill them with information! For example, we discovered that Breckenridge was the first brewery in Colorado to bottle their beer. We also learned that while Avalanche is the number one selling Breckenridge beer in Colorado, it's Vanilla Porter everywhere else. Breckenridge is currently expecting to be up to 30,000 barrels by the end of the year.

 

Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey is really a unique entry in the world of American Whiskeys. For starters, they previously had both Flying Dog and Oskar Blues create their mash before building their own brewery (just to produce mash for their whiskey). Their whiskey is also created using a variety of methods and custom equipment to cross the techniques of bourbon distillers and scotch distillers. Once finished with their barrels, they ship them to brewers all over the country and even as far away as Belgium. The Rackhouse Pub hosted a sampling of Wynkoop's new canned beers and had a great atmosphere decorated with used whiskey barrels.

Our brewery trip ended at Wynkoop for the Pints for Prostates Rare Beer Tasting. Since we were running a bit late, we arrived at the very end of the tasting and our selection was limited to what had not yet ran out. We weren't concerned, as great options such as 2009 Foothills Sexual Chocolate, 2004 Bell's Eccentric Ale, Barrel-aged Ivan the Terrible and Sierra Nevada Brandy Barrel-Aged Tripel were still left. After making our way through the rare beers, we tried a few of Wynkoop's rare beers, including a Belgian farmhouse ale fermented with 100% Brettanomyces and a barleywine from 2007. Both were great choices, but we had a beer festival we had to get to!

 Sexual Chocolate

Ivan the Terrible

Rare beer from Wynkoop - Orville and an aged Barleywine

During the Friday session of GABF, we spent some time at the Farm to Table event, where brewers and local chefs experimented and paired unique courses with interesting beers. This is where Greg Koch ambushed Matt with a Greg-face. Matt also got a picture with celebrity brewer Sam Calagione. We found Blaine Stuckey over by the Mad Anthony table, sharing his unique brand of beer festival antics with the Denver crowd. He was also dressed to party.

 

 Sam and Matt - Sam, we will forever harass you at beer festivals because of your toast video

Greg and Matt - Only one of these two guys looks terrified

The Mad Anthony crew

Cheers!

2010 Great American Beer Festival - Day 1

The 29th Great American Beer Festival is now underway. This year the festival has grown to 49,000 and sold out in record time. The convention hall may be more packed, but the lines are still entirely reasonable and most breweries don't even have a line. We've already spotted good showings from Indiana favorites Mad Anthony, Upland, Barley Island and Brugge Brasserie. We'll be looking for more tomorrow. So far the most impressive beer of the festival for me as been The Flavor from Trinity, which is an amazing and robust sour cherry beer. Matt's favorite was Trinity's Old Growth. It looks like Trinity might be the HBG favorite this year!

Breckenridge wasn't open yet when we walked by

Great Divide

But I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself, since we had an entire day of beer drinking in Denver to prep ourselves for the GABF opening. Our first stop was Great Divide where I enjoyed samples of a Smoked Baltic Porter, Hoss, DPA and Rumble. The Smoked Baltic Porter was easily my favorite beer here, with the characteristic sweetness of the Baltic Porter style making a great compliment to the smoked malt. Matt had a Titan IPA which is a solid, floral IPA. The Great Divide tap room was packed within 10 minutes of opening, so we quickly turned over our seats to allow more patrons to enjoy the beers.

Smoked Baltic Porter and Rumble

Titan IPA

Our next stop was Falling Rock. We settled in before the big crowd hit, and quickly realized that our stay here would be much longer than anticipated. Russian River Supplication, Salvation, Hopfather and Pliny the Elder were all on tap. In retrospect, we're pretty sure the Salvation was actually Temptation. Supplication and Temptation were both solid sours, as we have come to expect from Russian River. Supplication carried lots of cranberry and cherry notes with tons of well balanced tartness. The dry oak created a nice finish on this quality beer. Hopfather was a hop bomb like no other, carrying imbalance reminiscent of Stone Ruination. Temptation was full of that farmhouse funk present in many Belgian beers that diverges from the common tart or acetic flavor of sours. Pliny the Elder is one of the definitive West Coast style IPAs and always pleases. While Matt focused on the Russian River beers, I moved on to a 2009 Sierra Nevada Imperial Smoked Porter after the Supplication. The Smoked Porter contained a huge amount of smoke that stood up to the thick chocolate, coffee and roasted notes of the porter. Something of an Americanized Schlenkerla on steroids. Falling Rock during the week of GABF might as well be its own beer festival.

Temptation and Supplication

Hopfather

GABF taps Thursday afternoon at Falling Rock

We stopped by Rock Bottom to pick up my pro-am brewer credentials and get some dinner before the festival and enjoyed a very to-style Brown Ale with a medium body and toasted malt and nut flavors. Below are a number of scenes from the beginning of the festival. We'll be back with more tomorrow!

Bagpipers arriving

Bagpipers arriving

Volunteers ready for the doors to open

VIP ticket holders begin to enter

The floodgates are released

Hey I'm a Pro-Am brewer!

Comedy Mr. Beer option for Mike

Matt found our hilarious friend from Great Taste fame!

Panorama!