Beer Run Blog

Best of the GABF 2018

The Great American Beer Festival took on a new look this year - a new layout for the booths, a new group of special sections on the floor, an extra 100,000 feet in the Colorado Convention Center for wandering. But what didn't change was the quality of the beer being poured and the excitement that could be found in new discoveries.

And in evaluating what stood out this year, it wasn't one style or brewery so much as the multitude of flavors on display from so many parts of the country. And to that end — the diversity of excellence that makes it hard to cite a definitive must-have experience at the 37th annual event but acknowledges that there were multiple paths beer lovers could take to finding the many, many "it" beers out there — is what this column is dedicated.

Beer of the Festival: Parish Brewing Jameson-Barrel-Aged Irish Coffee Stout
If there was one offering that continually came to mind as both unique and delicious, it was this combination — which, in retrospect, represents a bit of a no-duh moment — of a beer mimicking a classic Irish drink aged in the barrel that produces the alcoholic part of that drink. A melange of cream, booziness and coffee —wrapped in a dark body that stands on its own yet lets all the tastes shine though — represented the best of what experimentation could produce this year. And it came from a Louisiana brewery, to boot.

Brewery of the Festival: Speciation Artisan Ales
This not-yet-two-year-old Michigan spontaneous-yeast specialist is breaking new ground with its use of tequila and mezcal barrels, and bringing new flavors to the sour genre. And it was hard not to return to its booth continually to run the entire menu of its offerings.  Its Proglacial tequila sour with passion fruit burst to life with complex and full flavors; similarly, its Saltation tequila-barrel-aged ale with blood orange and salt created its own universe of taste that was both tart and refreshing.

Beer-Drinking Experience of the Festival: The Referend Bier Blendery
In the hub-bub of tens of thousands of people rushing to get the best pours, the actual experience of beer presentation is usually lost. But the folks from this New Jersey brewery took visitors to their booth through a step-by-step explanation of the process of fermenting and aging their beer to create its terroir — doing so while pouring out of carefully crafted baskets to hold their bottles — and left a new appreciation for what you could learn about new and yet old-world brewing methods in just a short time. And the beer was sharp, dry and delicious.

Best (Non-Speciation) Sour: Two Roads Brewing Philsamic
This Flanders Red from Connecticut managed to find the perfect balance of cutting tartness and enveloping fruit flavors, managing both to stun with its complexity and to please with its drinkability. A close second goes to Epic Brewing's Oak & Orchard Pink Guava, which used the fruit to conjure a bright and brilliant taste that reminded one of tart lemonade.

Best Hop Bomb: River North Quadruple Dry-Hopped Mountain Haze
The only place you could find this Denver brewery pouring at the festival was briefly in the Buffalo Wild Wings booth. But what it broke out for the week was an amazingly smooth hazy IPA that was alive with tropical fruit flavors as its normally Citra-dominated beer added Mosaic, Simcoe and Idaho 7 hops and created a symphony of flavors that no out-of-state comer could match.

Best Addition to the Festival: Jameson Caskmates section
Highlighting the work of 17 breweries that aged a wide range of beers in Irish whiskey barrels, including the aforementioned Parish Brewing, was like a national tour of experimental flavors. Not every combination worked. But from Fat Head's decision to age its Mexican Hot Chocolate Stout in the vessels and pick up a new twist of flavor to Heavy Seas Beer's IPA being dry-hopped and then aged, there was a startling variety of new tastes created.

Worst Addition to the Festival: Exterior line management
I'm not sure exactly what changed in the way that people were let into the festival. But horror stories abounded — from the Beer Geekette arriving right as doors opened Thursday and having to wait 35 minutes to get in, to a friend relating the tale of the Saturday-afternoon line wrapping twice around the convention center. Something went very wrong, and ticket holders spent too much time waiting to get beer in their glasses.

Best Reminders that Great Beers Don't Have to Change: Serendipity and Hop  Zombie
It was worth waiting, once again, in a 30-person line at New Glarus Brewing, for Serendipity — an ale brewed with cherries, apples and cranberries and found annually in Denver only at the GABF — to remember just how rich fruit beer can be without being soured. And in an era of hazy-everything IPAs, Lone Tree Brewing's imperial red IPA, Hop Zombie, was almost shocking in its ability to imbue deep hop flavors in a complex, dark body.

Best Find of the Festival: Devil Wind Brewing Watermelon Wingman Gose
Tucked into a side booth with just three beers being poured, this line-less brewery got more out of an often-too-subtle fruit than any bigger-name brewer has. But for the story of how I found out, you'll have to check back in my next blog ...

Labels: Fat Head's Brewery, Great American Beer Festival, Heavy Seas Beer, Lone Tree Brewing, New Glarus, Parish Brewing, River North Brewery, Speciation Artisan Ales, The Referend Bier Blendery, Two Roads Brewing