Friday, January 08, 2016
5 Tips for Enjoying Vail Big Beers
For the first time in 10 years, I won't be attending the Vail Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival this year. The impending birth of our daughter had to trump plans to indulge in beautiful, high-alcohol beer all weekend — though don't think I didn't have to pause at least a little bit before making the decision to stay home.
For those of you lucky bastards who will be headed up Interstate 70 for the festivities, however, a world of tasting and pairing opportunities awaits you over the next two days. And if I might be so bold as to offer a few suggestions, here are the tips from a veteran on how to get the most out of the experience.
1) Start Saturday at the experimental tasting seminar.
One of the best things about the festival is that it allows you to start your day Saturday by tasting beer at 9:30 a.m. without anyone casting aspersions on your character. These seminars — which have ranged from barrel-aged beers to saisons and which this year focuses on Koelschips — feature the best brewers from Colorado and the country expounding on daring ways to make their beer. And, yes, you get to be trying a sour ale at the same time that most people are pouring milk on their Fruit Loops. But it feels less like an early-morning tailgate and far more more like a fine-dining experience.
2) Ask what they made for the show.
Few Colorado beer festivals inspire brewers to create products specifically for that show. But breweries from Great Divide to Grimm Brothers have been known to bust out barrel-aging experiments just to try them out on the crowd. Hell, Crazy Mountain Brewery debuted at the 2010 festival just to get reaction to its first beers. If something doesn't look familiar at a booth, ask about it and try it; it just may be the best thing you find there.
3) One (pseudo)-secret brewery is a must-stop.
Brewers from Sam Calagione to Adam Avery will be the people actually pouring the beer for you, and that is a wonderful perk to Big Beers. You can ask them about their experiments and try the latest thing in their arsenals, and the national places you love should be on your hit list. (See my wife, Denise, above, loving her Rumpkin in 2015.) But the smaller brewers in attendance are there for a reason, and there are some diamonds among them.
It was about three or four years ago at this festival that Three Barrel Brewing of Del Norte stopped being the best-kept secret in Colorado brewing and just became one of the up-and-coming sour makers in the state. Owner John Bricker typically brings up between five and 10 experiments that may involve chili, chocolate or other ingredients not often found in the genre. And chances are that at least one of them will be among the most talked-about offerings of the event.
4) Stop afterward at the Fireside Bar.
The bar at the Vail Cascade, home resort of the event, is one of the great craft-brewing outposts off of the Front Range. Featuring a beer program launched by festival co-founder Laura Lodge (pictured above), it's a place that has a cellar list, taps from mountain craft breweries and a good range of options. Plus, this is where the brewers themselves hang out when not serving up their creations, so it's a good chance to talk beer with the biggest experts in the industry.
5) Attend a dinner.
Beer dinners abound, both those arranged by the festival and more that are just popping up at locations around Vail. If there ever was a festival meant to pair beer and food, it's one that showcases the highest-ABV creations that are not 12-ounce bar beers so much as they are perfect to sample in smaller portions with, say, wagyu beef sushi. The dinners are incredibly chill events and, as this picture from 2015 demonstrates, even infants can sneak in if you're polite to the organizer. But this is a chance to experience and enjoy beer in a new way.
For the first time in 10 years, I won't be attending the Vail Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival this year. The impending birth of our daughter had to trump plans to indulge in beautiful, high-alcohol beer all weekend — though don't think I didn't have to pause at least a little bit before making the decision to stay home.
For those of you lucky bastards who will be headed up Interstate 70 for the festivities, however, a world of tasting and pairing opportunities awaits you over the next two days. And if I might be so bold as to offer a few suggestions, here are the tips from a veteran on how to get the most out of the experience.
1) Start Saturday at the experimental tasting seminar.
One of the best things about the festival is that it allows you to start your day Saturday by tasting beer at 9:30 a.m. without anyone casting aspersions on your character. These seminars — which have ranged from barrel-aged beers to saisons and which this year focuses on Koelschips — feature the best brewers from Colorado and the country expounding on daring ways to make their beer. And, yes, you get to be trying a sour ale at the same time that most people are pouring milk on their Fruit Loops. But it feels less like an early-morning tailgate and far more more like a fine-dining experience.
2) Ask what they made for the show.
Few Colorado beer festivals inspire brewers to create products specifically for that show. But breweries from Great Divide to Grimm Brothers have been known to bust out barrel-aging experiments just to try them out on the crowd. Hell, Crazy Mountain Brewery debuted at the 2010 festival just to get reaction to its first beers. If something doesn't look familiar at a booth, ask about it and try it; it just may be the best thing you find there.
3) One (pseudo)-secret brewery is a must-stop.
Brewers from Sam Calagione to Adam Avery will be the people actually pouring the beer for you, and that is a wonderful perk to Big Beers. You can ask them about their experiments and try the latest thing in their arsenals, and the national places you love should be on your hit list. (See my wife, Denise, above, loving her Rumpkin in 2015.) But the smaller brewers in attendance are there for a reason, and there are some diamonds among them.
It was about three or four years ago at this festival that Three Barrel Brewing of Del Norte stopped being the best-kept secret in Colorado brewing and just became one of the up-and-coming sour makers in the state. Owner John Bricker typically brings up between five and 10 experiments that may involve chili, chocolate or other ingredients not often found in the genre. And chances are that at least one of them will be among the most talked-about offerings of the event.
The bar at the Vail Cascade, home resort of the event, is one of the great craft-brewing outposts off of the Front Range. Featuring a beer program launched by festival co-founder Laura Lodge (pictured above), it's a place that has a cellar list, taps from mountain craft breweries and a good range of options. Plus, this is where the brewers themselves hang out when not serving up their creations, so it's a good chance to talk beer with the biggest experts in the industry.
5) Attend a dinner.
Beer dinners abound, both those arranged by the festival and more that are just popping up at locations around Vail. If there ever was a festival meant to pair beer and food, it's one that showcases the highest-ABV creations that are not 12-ounce bar beers so much as they are perfect to sample in smaller portions with, say, wagyu beef sushi. The dinners are incredibly chill events and, as this picture from 2015 demonstrates, even infants can sneak in if you're polite to the organizer. But this is a chance to experience and enjoy beer in a new way.
Labels: Avery Brewing, Beer dinners, Big Beers, Crazy Mountain Brewing Company, Dogfish Head, Great Divide, Grimm Brothers Brewhouse, Three Barrel Brewing, Vail Cascade
Wednesday, January 07, 2015
A Big Beers History
The throngs of people who will flock to the 15th annual Vail Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival this weekend might have a hard time picturing it being anything other than a magnet for some of the boldest beer in the country and most serious beer geeks in Colorado. But festival coordinator Laura Lodge can remember a time when Big Beers wasn't quite so big.
In 2001, Lodge's brother, Bill Lodge owned distributor High Point Brewing Co. and had a portfolio of imported European beers and American craft beer that was one of the finest in the area. But in those days he also had a problem convincing bars and stores and restaurants to buy the beer because, even though they liked what they tasted, they couldn't get customers to pay more for the offerings.
So Bill decided to hold a trade show above the Hubcap Brewery where he would gather 20 to 25 of the different brewers and importers in his portfolio and have them pour their products for the people who could put them on their menus and shelves. And what's more, Bill and Laura decided it would be a good idea to invite the public so that they could, as Laura now says, "sample an ounce of this crazy beer and then decide if they'd pay a little more for it."
What happened next is what you might expect. Nearly 200 people showed up. Their eyes bulged at the assortment of flavors available to them. And they begged the Lodges to do it again. And again.
Today, it is arguably the best beer festival in Colorado, rivaled only by the girth and variety of flavors at the Great American Beer Festival but having a per-pour quality level that is unmatched anywhere.
"Big Beers has never had a marketing budget," Laura (at right) said. "It was built by the brewers. They'd say 'I'll see you in Vail.' And the people who figured it out have come."
There have been changes, mind you. But each one has added onto the appeal of what is now a full four-day weekend of taste exploration.
Just one year later, the Big Beers homebrew contest came to bear. It now draws entries from across the country.
In 2005, Adam Avery talked Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head into coming out, but they insisted they do a beer-pairing dinner together. They offered one of the first double-pairing suppers in beer-dinner lore, with each course coming with high-gravity pearls from both breweries, and this year the now-annual "calibration dinner" sold out in 15 seconds.
Around that time, Lodge added what might be the most unique feature of the festival - an early-morning Saturday seminar (starting at 9:30 a.m. this year) in which brewers come to talk about an experimental genre. Tables are set with white cloths and 8-10 beers are poured into small snifters to remind attendees that it's an educational forum rather than a tailgating-style morning chugfest. But it still is a place where you can enjoy a barrel-aged imperial stout while others are eating breakfast and no one will look down upon you.
In 2013, the festival's main tasting session sold out for the first time, like a long-held secret that finally had to be passed around. Last year the Lodges moved it to a more spacious area on the Vail Cascade property, but this year Laura had to limit the number of vendor tables at 126, creating her first-ever wait list for breweries to get into it.
The reason for the limit is simple: Laura refuses for it to become one of those festivals where lines get 10 people deep and breweries send marketing reps to pour the beer rather than brewers.
This, after all, is not just a festival where you can sip a one-off, taproom-only barrel-aged beer from Great Divide and then turn around and discover the latest experiment from Bell's Brewery. This is a festival where the people who continue to pour and explain your beers are Avery and Calagione - brewing-industry rock stars who settle upon this ski town once a year because they know they can learn as much about the brewing art as the patrons trying to sip up every ounce they can.
"I don't want it to get any bigger," Laura said. "I want to keep it a small, connected opportunity for the people who are there. And I want to make sure we have brewmasters and owners attending ... It is the brewers who have made this event happen."
(The general tasting session once again is sold out. But if you have not gotten tickets for this year, I can't recommend enough that you plan to make this festival in 2016.)
The throngs of people who will flock to the 15th annual Vail Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival this weekend might have a hard time picturing it being anything other than a magnet for some of the boldest beer in the country and most serious beer geeks in Colorado. But festival coordinator Laura Lodge can remember a time when Big Beers wasn't quite so big.
In 2001, Lodge's brother, Bill Lodge owned distributor High Point Brewing Co. and had a portfolio of imported European beers and American craft beer that was one of the finest in the area. But in those days he also had a problem convincing bars and stores and restaurants to buy the beer because, even though they liked what they tasted, they couldn't get customers to pay more for the offerings.
So Bill decided to hold a trade show above the Hubcap Brewery where he would gather 20 to 25 of the different brewers and importers in his portfolio and have them pour their products for the people who could put them on their menus and shelves. And what's more, Bill and Laura decided it would be a good idea to invite the public so that they could, as Laura now says, "sample an ounce of this crazy beer and then decide if they'd pay a little more for it."
What happened next is what you might expect. Nearly 200 people showed up. Their eyes bulged at the assortment of flavors available to them. And they begged the Lodges to do it again. And again.
Today, it is arguably the best beer festival in Colorado, rivaled only by the girth and variety of flavors at the Great American Beer Festival but having a per-pour quality level that is unmatched anywhere.
"Big Beers has never had a marketing budget," Laura (at right) said. "It was built by the brewers. They'd say 'I'll see you in Vail.' And the people who figured it out have come."
There have been changes, mind you. But each one has added onto the appeal of what is now a full four-day weekend of taste exploration.
Just one year later, the Big Beers homebrew contest came to bear. It now draws entries from across the country.
In 2005, Adam Avery talked Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head into coming out, but they insisted they do a beer-pairing dinner together. They offered one of the first double-pairing suppers in beer-dinner lore, with each course coming with high-gravity pearls from both breweries, and this year the now-annual "calibration dinner" sold out in 15 seconds.
Around that time, Lodge added what might be the most unique feature of the festival - an early-morning Saturday seminar (starting at 9:30 a.m. this year) in which brewers come to talk about an experimental genre. Tables are set with white cloths and 8-10 beers are poured into small snifters to remind attendees that it's an educational forum rather than a tailgating-style morning chugfest. But it still is a place where you can enjoy a barrel-aged imperial stout while others are eating breakfast and no one will look down upon you.In 2013, the festival's main tasting session sold out for the first time, like a long-held secret that finally had to be passed around. Last year the Lodges moved it to a more spacious area on the Vail Cascade property, but this year Laura had to limit the number of vendor tables at 126, creating her first-ever wait list for breweries to get into it.
The reason for the limit is simple: Laura refuses for it to become one of those festivals where lines get 10 people deep and breweries send marketing reps to pour the beer rather than brewers.
This, after all, is not just a festival where you can sip a one-off, taproom-only barrel-aged beer from Great Divide and then turn around and discover the latest experiment from Bell's Brewery. This is a festival where the people who continue to pour and explain your beers are Avery and Calagione - brewing-industry rock stars who settle upon this ski town once a year because they know they can learn as much about the brewing art as the patrons trying to sip up every ounce they can.
"I don't want it to get any bigger," Laura said. "I want to keep it a small, connected opportunity for the people who are there. And I want to make sure we have brewmasters and owners attending ... It is the brewers who have made this event happen."
(The general tasting session once again is sold out. But if you have not gotten tickets for this year, I can't recommend enough that you plan to make this festival in 2016.)Labels: Avery Brewing, Big Beers, Dogfish Head, Festivals, Vail Cascade
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, July 21, 2013
A Mountain-Sized Good Idea
There is no dearth of opportunities for beer exploration in Colorado, from the state's many festivals to myriad brewery-restaurant pairing dinners. But there is just one Colorado resort that has a dedicated craft beer program - and it's doing a hell of a job with it.
The craft beer program at the Vail Cascade Resort launched quietly in December 2011. But it has ramped its activity this year, and a recent visit with the Beer Geekette showed why it's not just worth a visit when you're up in the mountains but could serve as a model for what other major hotels can do.
Laura Lodge, organizer of the annual Big Beers Belgians & Barleywines festival in Vail, (and pictured with the Beer Geekette above) was approached by Cascade officials about starting the program after they saw the crowds the Great American Beer Festival drew. Her idea was not just to throw a few local beers on tap but to keep things very fresh and interesting.
The beer mix at the resort's Fireside Bar and its restaurant, Atwater on Gore Creek, is 40% Colorado craft, 40% U.S. craft and 20% international - on tap and in bottles. What's more, Laura rotates all five of the taps every six to eight weeks, and she's yet to offer the same Colorado brewery twice. The bottle list is extensive, and the cellar list (pictured below) features some finds; the Cascade got the only case of Breckenridge's excellent Summer Cab Ride sold outside the Denver brewery.
Meanwhile, the programming started originally with "Friday Night Flights," a weekly effort to offer beer pairings with food that has evolved into full-time offerings of flights on the menu. And the resort that serves as home once a year to Big Beers now has something going every month.
Once a quarter, the Cascade goes all out with its "Sip, Savor & Brew" program featuring seminars, food/beer pairings and discussions with two to three breweries asked up for the weekend. During the other months, it has a "Brewmasters Weekend" format great for the beer geeks who want to enjoy food and conversation with brewers and still see the rest of Vail.
This past weekend, it began on Friday with a "Small Plates and Craft Beer Pairings" event in which Atwater's Chef Jay melded four Upslope Brewing beers with his own creations. Sometimes, you were impressed with the food, such as his fancy corn dogs (pictured above) paired artfully with the Boulder brewery's mild but pleasing Craft Lager. And sometimes, guests marveled at the ability to combine hard-to-pair beers, like Upslope's 10% ABV Imperial IPA with a sweet onion popover and grilled peaches smothered in cheddar cheese (pictured below) that offset the sharp hops.
Then, on Saturday, there was a simple "Meet the Brewmaster" event in which Upslope head brewer Alex Violette poured six types of beer for three hours in the late afternoon and offered free samples to anyone around. This was a great event not just because all comers got to try both the standard offerings and only-at-the-brewery specials like the new Session Pale Ale but because it offered a chance to chat with the beer creator (the subject of a future blog). And afterward, Violette (pictured below) hung out for hours at the Fireside Bar, drinking and chatting beer with a group of craft fans.
While there are a good number of beer-specialty restaurants around the state, the idea of taking craft beer into places where Bud products were once the predominant order is both bold and long overdue. And what Lodge is doing at the Vail Cascade is worthy of support and qualifies as a good excuse to get up to the mountains even when the snow isn't four feet deep.
There is no dearth of opportunities for beer exploration in Colorado, from the state's many festivals to myriad brewery-restaurant pairing dinners. But there is just one Colorado resort that has a dedicated craft beer program - and it's doing a hell of a job with it.
The craft beer program at the Vail Cascade Resort launched quietly in December 2011. But it has ramped its activity this year, and a recent visit with the Beer Geekette showed why it's not just worth a visit when you're up in the mountains but could serve as a model for what other major hotels can do.
Laura Lodge, organizer of the annual Big Beers Belgians & Barleywines festival in Vail, (and pictured with the Beer Geekette above) was approached by Cascade officials about starting the program after they saw the crowds the Great American Beer Festival drew. Her idea was not just to throw a few local beers on tap but to keep things very fresh and interesting.
The beer mix at the resort's Fireside Bar and its restaurant, Atwater on Gore Creek, is 40% Colorado craft, 40% U.S. craft and 20% international - on tap and in bottles. What's more, Laura rotates all five of the taps every six to eight weeks, and she's yet to offer the same Colorado brewery twice. The bottle list is extensive, and the cellar list (pictured below) features some finds; the Cascade got the only case of Breckenridge's excellent Summer Cab Ride sold outside the Denver brewery.
Meanwhile, the programming started originally with "Friday Night Flights," a weekly effort to offer beer pairings with food that has evolved into full-time offerings of flights on the menu. And the resort that serves as home once a year to Big Beers now has something going every month.
Once a quarter, the Cascade goes all out with its "Sip, Savor & Brew" program featuring seminars, food/beer pairings and discussions with two to three breweries asked up for the weekend. During the other months, it has a "Brewmasters Weekend" format great for the beer geeks who want to enjoy food and conversation with brewers and still see the rest of Vail.
This past weekend, it began on Friday with a "Small Plates and Craft Beer Pairings" event in which Atwater's Chef Jay melded four Upslope Brewing beers with his own creations. Sometimes, you were impressed with the food, such as his fancy corn dogs (pictured above) paired artfully with the Boulder brewery's mild but pleasing Craft Lager. And sometimes, guests marveled at the ability to combine hard-to-pair beers, like Upslope's 10% ABV Imperial IPA with a sweet onion popover and grilled peaches smothered in cheddar cheese (pictured below) that offset the sharp hops.
Then, on Saturday, there was a simple "Meet the Brewmaster" event in which Upslope head brewer Alex Violette poured six types of beer for three hours in the late afternoon and offered free samples to anyone around. This was a great event not just because all comers got to try both the standard offerings and only-at-the-brewery specials like the new Session Pale Ale but because it offered a chance to chat with the beer creator (the subject of a future blog). And afterward, Violette (pictured below) hung out for hours at the Fireside Bar, drinking and chatting beer with a group of craft fans.
While there are a good number of beer-specialty restaurants around the state, the idea of taking craft beer into places where Bud products were once the predominant order is both bold and long overdue. And what Lodge is doing at the Vail Cascade is worthy of support and qualifies as a good excuse to get up to the mountains even when the snow isn't four feet deep.
Labels: Big Beers, Food pairing, Upslope Brewing, Vail Cascade
