DRINK IT IN
By Danielle Yuthas
At the annual national beer trade show, Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado, affectionately known as GABF, it isn’t a just a day of drinking; it’s the sport of day drinking. Like any athletic contender, participants have to be in the zone, they have to hydrate, they have to carb load, (most commonly seen in pretzel-necklace form) and they have to commit to excellence. Denverites have a home field advantage, those from low altitude need to condition harder in advance for maximum stamina.
Beer enthusiasts return year after year because it’s just too much to drink in, literally, there are approximately 2,2248 beers to choose from at one ounce each would be the equivalent of 187 beers and 3 ounces. You would have to be a contender for years to sample each one, and even at that, they are constantly changing. Imagine more beer than you could ever drink.
Fall is probably beer’s favorite season. Not only is Oktoberfest highly celebrated, but the eponymous category of beer is competitive in the lager beer style along with the Dortmunder European-Style Export. Oktoberfest is not the only type of seasonal popular pour, other selections of note are New Belgium’s Hoptober Golden Ale from Colorado, Seattle’s Elysian Brewing Co.’s Dark O’ the Moon, and Gold medal winner in field beer, Frog’s Hollow Double Pumpkin Ale by Hoppin’ Frog Brewing Co. of Akron. How beer can taste like a pumpkin, I’m not sure, but it is a festive and fun beer to experiment with.
There are a total of 79 categories of beer to be judged running the gamut of wheat beer, fruit beer, herb and spice beer, chocolate beer, coffee beer, specialty beer, rye beer, honey beer, gluten-free beer, barrel aged beer, smoked beer, American-style Pilsner, Belgian-style Abbey ale and Oatmeal Stout. Every type and label imaginable and then a handful more.
The novelty flavors usually create the most buzz. Short’s Key Lime Pie brew, a personal favorite, says right on the label “brewed with marshmallow and lactose with lime and graham crackers added” -- talk about a true dessert beer! You have to taste it to believe it but it won a gold medal in the experimental beer category. Colorado’s Own Blue Moon (owned by MillerCoors), Large Brewery of the Year winner, created quite a stir with its GABF-exclusive Peanut Butter Blonde, and there was a fluid line for Maui Brewing’s CoConut Porter. The must-try brews go the fastest, so brewers need to bring ample samples for all three days or else they run out before half the line gets in.
But it’s not all off-the-wall flavors and novelty brews, GABF is about fundamentally good beer and the breweries and home brewers that create it. It truly is a craft founded on trial, error and experimentation. The pale, the red, the amber, the brown—it’s all in the very individual experience. There isn’t a defined “right” “wrong” or “supposed to” in the rulebook of hops. Attendees boast the beauty of beer is not to try to detect the bouquet, the maturity nor the tannins like their grape counterparts, but to simply drink it down and enjoy. A quality brew is to be shared and appreciated universally across ages and genders and recipes can be handed down for generations. Finding the perfect beer for you, the one to tip back on Friday at 5:30 p.m. is the ultimate goal.
And maybe medals should be awarded to the drinking champions of the day instead of the beers themselves; after all, this sport is ultimately for us, the consumers. Game on!
