Wednesday, January 08, 2014
Big Beers Gets Bigger
Vail Big Beers, Belgians & Barleywines Festival, once one of the state's hidden gems, has grown in reputation to the point where it's now an accepted fact that it's the best non-GABF annual beer event in Colorado. That's enough to make any organizer rest on their laurels.
But resting is something that festival coordinator Laura Lodge doesn't do so well. And so, this year's event, scheduled for Thursday through Saturday, has added more sessions, more beer knowledge and, maybe most importantly, more room for both extra patrons and extra breweries.
The biggest news, if you haven't heard - and if you haven't heard anything about the event, I'll just say: Drop your plans for the weekend and head to Vail - is that the grand tasting has moved to a bigger area with space roughly twice that of the past two years. While lines have never been a problem at the festival, elbow-to-elbow maneuvering at times has been, and this will eliminate that and give more breweries a chance to strut their stuff.
That the festival will be accommodating to more beer makers is evident from the list of just how many small but talented brewers will be pouring at sessions throughout Saturday. Trinity Brewing and Mystic Brewery will be among those discussing experimental brewing at 9:30 a.m., sour savants Captain Lawrence Brewing will co-host two seminars with Deschutes and both Bell's Brewery and Cambridge Brewing - two of the best breweries not selling in Colorado - will be part of a featured early-afternoon talk.
And for those who like to divide their gigantic-beer drinking over multiple days, there is a Brewers Association-led Friday night talk on winter seasonals and a varied lineup of rare beers from Thursday through Saturday in the Cascade Lounge.
If this all sounds like some sort of commercial for the festival, it's no more so one than all the hype that I and other bloggers try to sort through before the Great American Beer Festival. But in the case of Vail Big Beers, it's all laid out in one location - the Vail Cascade Resort - and happens to center around an event about which too few people still seem to know.
Maybe I should keep quiet and go on acting as if I know a secret. But I'd rather shout about it - and spend the next month writing blogs based on things I learned this upcoming weekend. See you there.
Vail Big Beers, Belgians & Barleywines Festival, once one of the state's hidden gems, has grown in reputation to the point where it's now an accepted fact that it's the best non-GABF annual beer event in Colorado. That's enough to make any organizer rest on their laurels.
But resting is something that festival coordinator Laura Lodge doesn't do so well. And so, this year's event, scheduled for Thursday through Saturday, has added more sessions, more beer knowledge and, maybe most importantly, more room for both extra patrons and extra breweries.
The biggest news, if you haven't heard - and if you haven't heard anything about the event, I'll just say: Drop your plans for the weekend and head to Vail - is that the grand tasting has moved to a bigger area with space roughly twice that of the past two years. While lines have never been a problem at the festival, elbow-to-elbow maneuvering at times has been, and this will eliminate that and give more breweries a chance to strut their stuff.
That the festival will be accommodating to more beer makers is evident from the list of just how many small but talented brewers will be pouring at sessions throughout Saturday. Trinity Brewing and Mystic Brewery will be among those discussing experimental brewing at 9:30 a.m., sour savants Captain Lawrence Brewing will co-host two seminars with Deschutes and both Bell's Brewery and Cambridge Brewing - two of the best breweries not selling in Colorado - will be part of a featured early-afternoon talk.
And for those who like to divide their gigantic-beer drinking over multiple days, there is a Brewers Association-led Friday night talk on winter seasonals and a varied lineup of rare beers from Thursday through Saturday in the Cascade Lounge.
If this all sounds like some sort of commercial for the festival, it's no more so one than all the hype that I and other bloggers try to sort through before the Great American Beer Festival. But in the case of Vail Big Beers, it's all laid out in one location - the Vail Cascade Resort - and happens to center around an event about which too few people still seem to know.
Maybe I should keep quiet and go on acting as if I know a secret. But I'd rather shout about it - and spend the next month writing blogs based on things I learned this upcoming weekend. See you there.
Labels: Bell's Brewing, Big Beers, Cambridge Brewing, Captain Lawrence Brewing, Deschutes Brewing, Trinity Brewing, Vail Cascade
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Bigger But - More Importantly - BolderWhen 83 breweries show up to a festival bringing the biggest beers they make, you expect a lot of bourbon barrel-aged stouts, double IPAs and Belgian-style tripels. And, yes, there were plenty of each of those at Saturday's ninth annual Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines festival.
But what really stuck out this year was not just how outrageously hoppy or malty the beverages gathered in the Vail Marriott Mountain Resort were, but how creative brewers have become in making beers of at least 7 percent alcohol by volume. And thus, the event served as a peek at what the future of beer might be.
"I think 20 years from now, we'll look back and recognize now as the point where the gloves came off and consumers really recognized what beer had to offer," said Dogfish Head maestro Sam Calagione, whose recent New Yorker profile only helped to raise the visibility of big beers.
Standing out among all the giant American experimenters and ageless Belgian masters, for example, was Altitude Chophouse and Brewery of Laramie, Wyo., a brewpub so small that it considered bottling but had to nix the idea because of cost concerns. Yet, it grabbed a lot of the talk at the festival with a Cayenne Cocoa Bock that creatively combined inky, chocolaty darkness with a late-breaking fleck of heat that served as a defibrillator for the tongue.
If it wasn't a peppery bock grabbing attention, then it was one of several Belgian pale ales that brewers were rolling out. Stone Brewing led the way with a Cali-Belgique IPA, first released in August, that artfully blended hoppy floralness with Belgian esters to create something shockingly smooth. But Utah-based Uinta Brewing and Belgium's La Chouffe were among the others who also put their own versions on display, with the Belgian-made entry having significantly less of a hop characteristic.
Big, gutsy saisons also are making their imprint on a style that hasn't been as bold in the past. Several were on display in Vail, including a very sweet and drinkable Saison Rue from California-based The Bruery, a beer that could become the boldest beer of the spring and summer seasons.
And, of course, the continuing fascination with Belgian-style sour ales remains in place. Between Russian River's latest batch of Consecration (which they cracked open at the Great American Beer Festival this year), Cambridge Brewing's Cerise Casee (my personal favorite beer of the GABF) and Deschutes Brewery's Dissident Old Bruin, the best trend in American beer continues to get better.
That said, it's not like the traditional big beers are going away. There were no less than 21 barleywines, 15 tripels, 11 double or imperial IPAs and six bourbon-barrel-aged beers on display. Tasting a hopped masterpiece like Flying Dog's Double Dog Double Pale Ale reassures you the extreme beers that have been the focus of the past 10 years are still evolving art forms.
But now there are tastes for everyone, and more is still to come. At talks over the course of the day, apple and pear beers, huge coffee porters and new experiments with Brettanomyces were all mentioned and may not be far away.
Yes, there truly is a big beer for everyone at this point. Now the trick is finding the time to drink them all.
Labels: Altitude Chophouse and Brewery, Big Beers, Cambridge Brewing, Deschutes Brewing, Flying Dog, Russian River, Stone Brewing, The Bruery, Uinta Brewing
