Great American Beer Festival

We just got back from an incredible few days in Denver, CO where the Brewer's Association was holding their 30th annual Great American Beer Festival.

For those who have never been, GABF is truly a remarkable time and we highly recommend you get there at some point in the future.  Held annually in the convention center in downtown Denver, the hall is filled with thousands of people trying beers from hundreds and hundreds of breweries from all around the United States.  It's an incredible time for us to showcase our beer to people from all over the country who don't typically get to see our beers and even if they do, they never get to see any of the more rare beers...like Oude Tart and Black Tuesday.  

Nothing gives us a better feeling than having a line of people at our booth, super excited to try some of our beers and letting us know how much they enjoy them.  This year we had people at our booth for another reason as well, however.  People came by to take photos because we decided to decorate our booth with loads of images of cats as well as stuffed animal cats and cat toys.  There was no true reasoning behind our cat theme, we just thought it was hilarious.

GABF is not only a festival for tasting interesting beers, but it is the largest commercial beer competition in the world, this year having close to 600 breweries enter a total of 3,930 beers to the various categories.  And of all of those entries, we are very very proud to say we took home two silver medals and one gold medal!  Both Hottenroth and The Wanderer won silver and Papier, our very first anniversary beer and one of the very first batches of beer brewed at The Bruery took a gold medal. 

The fact that two of our sour ales and one of our biggest and most complex bourbon barrel aged strong ales took home awards just gives us that much more faith in our Quercus Maximus project.  As we continue to brew more of these intricate beers, hopefully we can win some more awards in the future!

GABF

We all just got back from an incredible weekend at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, CO and we're pretty much spending the day recovering. 8 people from The Bruery went up for the festival and we really had an incredible time. We had the opportunity to get some behind the scenes tours of Odell's brewery, New Belgium Brewery and Avery Brewery as well as sneak a peak at The Great Divide's Brewery located right in downtown Denver. We Spent the days meeting up with other brewers and beer lovers from around the country and had the opportunity to share our beers with people from all over, which was really a great experience. Hopefully some of the other great breweries we discovered will become partners for some collaboration efforts in the future, which would be amazing.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to take home any medals this year (there were over 3,000 beers entered in the 78 categories), but there seemed to be a great outpouring of love for our beers on the show floor, and thats where it really counts. Since many of our beers are sort of bizarre for their style, its tough to win an award up against beers that are dead on for the style, but its really about producing a product that people enjoy. We did (or shall I say Rachel did) win the award for festival booth flair! And the line for Black Tuesday was insane.

For anyone who was at the festival and stopped by, thanks! And for anyone who didn't make it out, we highly recommend you do next year as it was one of the best trips we've been on.