2011 #GABF Attending Breweries

Image from GABF Site

I just noticed that GABF has posted the attending breweries (Breweries at the Festival). I think this is a recent posting, but I just may have missed it up until now. I am not sure this is a final list. It might not be, but I don't think the final list would be much different than this one.

Of course, I have mentioned the GABF on this blog quite a bit: http://blog.ericshepard.com/search/label/GABF .

Part of the reason that this list is interesting to me is that I will be attending the festival and will use it to try to find beers on the Zymurgy Best Beers in America list that I don't get a chance to try elsewhere.

Here are the beers on the list that I have not had (or at least I don't know for sure that I've had):

#GABF Needs Something to Change

Some of you are going to hate me. I got all the GABF tickets I wanted.

I got a ticket to Thursday night. I got two tickets for Friday night. I got two tickets to the Saturday afternoon Members Only session. I made the decision not to buy Saturday night tickets, because that is my least favorite session.

My only complaint is that my Friday night tickets do not let me go to the Members Only line. I would have preferred being able to go through the short line, but it is not that big of a deal to have to go through the public line.

Obviously, many many many people did not get the GABF tickets they wanted (see #GABF #TicketMasterFail and #GABF Beer Geeks are PISSED). Had I known how the general public sale would have gone, I never would have complained about the #TicketMasterFail during the members-only sale. As it turns out, the only way to have guaranteed yourself a ticket was to be an AHA (American Homebrewers Association) or BA (Brewers Association) member.

#GABF Week (I've been slacking)

I've been slacking.

It seems like all the beer blogger in the world (or at least those that show up in my rss feed) have been busy blogging about the Great American Beer Fest and/or the tons of events in and around Denver this week.

Take a look at Denver off the Wagon's beer category and see how many GABF related articles you see. Go ahead ... I'll wait.

Check out the Denver Post's First Drafts blog and browse through the amazing collection of "Scouting GABF 2013" articles. Again .. Go ahead ... I'll wait.

Go peruse Brewtally Insane  for Mark's day-by-day GABF Calendar.

It seems like the guys at The Full Pint have been providing useful GABF information for the past couple months, and certainly have not slowed down now that GABF week is here.

Of course, my buddy Dave at Fermentedly Challenged always has Denver area information, which by default means GABF information this week.

I could go on and on, but my slacking attitude prevents me from listing much more in this post.

#GABF Week is here

Thursday is the first session of the 2012 Great American Beer Festival. 

Does anyone out there know why the GABF waits until Thursday to publish the actual beers at the festival?

I saw that the Colorado Beer Girl asked the same question on GABF: Why do you make us wait until the day OF for the beer list?!
One of the comments on the blog mention that there is a partial list at http://thefullpint.com/tag/gabf-2012-roundup/ This is nice, but I still don't know why the GABF makes us wait.

For some reason, the past few Mondays, someone has asked me how the Great American Beer Fest went. It is much later this year than it has been the past couple years, but still it seems odd that Denver area people are that confused as to when the GABF is.

#GABF Events

The GABF is less than a month away. Aren't you excited? I am.

I got an email from the Great American Beer Festival (actually a guy from the Brewer Association named "Spencer", pretending his name was "Great American Beer Festival"). The email announced that the GABF Beer & Food Pavilion Schedule was out.

It is very possible that it has been out for quite awhile, but this is the first I have looked at it. You can see at the GABF Event Schedule along with what is going on at the "Brewers Studio Pavilion" and other GABF events.

You see, GABF is not just about drinking beer. If you are a beer geek (even if you are not) you can attend presentations.

#GABF Month

I cannot believe GABF month is already here.

I am excited.

Last week, I shared on the SheppyBrew Facebook Page the article The Greenhorn’s Survival Guide to GABF. If you are going to GABF, there is some great advice in there. Read it. I think especially the ones that help you from getting to out-of-control drunk are important.

• Do eat before arriving
• Do pace yourself
• Do drink a lot of water

Over indulging is a bad thing. Don't do it.

So, now that the festival is less than 2 weeks away, I need to start making my game plan.

Got my G.A.B.F. Tickets

One of the perks of being an AHA member is that I got to purchase GABF tickets before the general public. The member's "pre-sale" went live at 10:00 AM on Tuesday June 28th. By 10:05, I had my tickets ordered. An even better perk is that I will be able to get through the members only entrance, which (based on last year's experience) will save me a considerable amount of time getting into the event.

I stole this picture from the GABF site photo page.

One of the cool things about attending GABF is seeing all the interesting costumes. Of course, the sexist chauvinist pig that I am, my favorites were worn by women. I thought this year, the SheppyBrew Beer Model would like to wear some sort of Beer-Wench-type costume. I even pointed her to some possibilities on Amazon.com . She has informed me that she will not be purchasing a Beer-Wench outfit for the festival. She is planning on wearing her Stone Brewing Company "You're not Worthy" tee shirt, which is a pretty good choice too. It is beer related and it does show off her chest nicely.

Of course, GABF doesn't take place until the end of September. It does always sell out, but I probably didn't have to purchase my tickets right when the pre-sale started. We certainly don't have to nail-down our outfits for the event, yet. Just thought I'd share that I have taken the first step to attend this year.

One disappointing thing is that Mr. Beer is not planning on attending this year. I actually had fun helping out in their booth last year. I guess I'll have more time for beer sampling now that I won't be covering the booth, but I was planning on spending some time with them this year. Oh well.

If you would like to partially re-live my GABF experience from last year, check out GABF Final Session and Random Thoughts and the links on that blog post. I'm sure I'll blog about this year's GABF as well.

Beer Model with the pretzel necklace.

Another great outfit from last year's event. I stole this from the GABF picture albums.

October Blogging

Well, the October page-views blew away September's on this blog. This of course continues the streak of monthly record breaking page-views that has been going on since May of 2011. This is not too much of a surprise as GABF seems to attract significant traffic to this blog every year.

And what have my readers been looking at? Glad you asked. Here are the top 10 view pages over the past 30 days:

2011 #GABF Final? Thoughts

What a weekend!

If you've never been to the GABF, I won't be able to properly explain it to you, so I won't even try.

A couple of  "notes to self"...

Got my #GABF tickets again

Image from GABF Facebook Page

Well, Great American Beer Fest tickets sold out again in record time, and once again beer fans are frustrated to the point of anger.

Once again, I used my standing as an AHA member to take part in the members-only presale and was able to get all the tickets I wanted. Everyone that I know in the office who tried also got everything they wanted (including two co-workers who purchased an AHA membership JUST to get GABF tickets).

Lots of members got stuck with the Saturday evening session, though. Personally, if my choice is to go to the Saturday evening session or to not go, I would pick to stay away.

For me personally, things went much smoother than last year (see #GABF #TicketMasterFail), but the TicketMaster process was far from flawless. I got my Friday night tickets no problem, but when I went to try to get the Saturday afternoon tickets, TicketMaster was not recognizing my Membership Number.

October 2013 Blogging

October had a very strong mid-month. Thank you #GABF. For awhile it looked like it would blow away August, but it was a very lack-luster end of the month. October still has the new page-view record, but just barely. I hope November picks up from the end of October.

Anyway, in case you are wondering, here are the blog posts that have been the most looked-at over the past 30 days:

#GABF Beer Geeks are PISSED

Happy #IPADay. Wow. I mentioned a couple days ago what a #TicketMasterFail the Pre-sale of the Great American Beer Fest was.

If you want to refresh your memory or if you didn't see it, you can look at #GABF #TicketMasterFail.

Today, there are even more pissed off beer geeks.

If you don't believe me, check out some of the nasty comments at the GABF facebook page or do a twitter search on #GABF.

The 2012 Great American Beer Festival sold out so fast that lots of people missed out. Officially, the announcement was that all sessions had been sold out in 45 minutes.

Pre-event #GABF Post

Ok ... it must be GABF time. My blog is seeing lots of traffic today and almost all of it is looking at GABF related content.

I think I'm ready for tonight. The GABF posted their Beers at the Festival page today. I did a quick cross-reference against my Thursday night #GABF plan. Quite a few of the beers I want to try are not going to be at the festival, but that isn't too disappointing. I'll get over it. Tonight is mostly about reconnaissance anyway. I have to be at work tomorrow, so I'll take it real easy tonight anyway.

#GABF Tickets on sale #IPADay

General public tickets for the Great American Beer Festival go on sale on August 2.

I didn't make the connection before, but August 2 is also this year's official #IPADay. I don't know if this is a simple coincidence or if The Beer Wench purposely planned it this way.

Of course, as one of the select few (AHA or BA members), I get to buy my GABF tickets tomorrow at 10AM Denver time. I have 10 - 10:30 blocked off on my work calendar so that no one makes the mistake of scheduling a meeting with me during that critical time.

Interestingly enough, one of my co-workers bought an AHA membership for herself and her fiancee so that they could by GABF tickets early and get into the Members' Only session. Not sure I would do this if I was not a home-brewer, but part of the reason that I decided to become a member of the AHA is all the GABF-related benefits that go with the membership.

#GABF Big Friendly Guide

In the category of  "ask and you shall receive" ... I got an email from my Contact Me form today in response to my blog post "My #GABF Game Plan".

Honestly, I was a bit bummed out that GABF spent the time and effort to develop an iPhone app. I love the concept. I just don't have an iPhone. Not only don't I have an iPhone, but I will never purchase an iPhone. My wife has an Android phone, so it would be better for me if they developed an Android app. But, personally, I think it would make much more sense to develop part of their website with this sort of functionality so EVERY smart phone could take advantage of the data they are making available for iPhone users.

My #GABF Game Plan

Over the weekend, I saw that the GABF Map has been posted. This means I can start designing my plan-of-attack for the festival. There are over 450 breweries and over 2000 beers. Obviously, I cannot try every one. I have my list of beer to attempt to sample. I know which breweries are going to be there but not which beers each brewery will serve. There are a few breweries I know for sure I want to hit in addition to my list. My buddy Diane from Mr. Beer told me to be on the lookout for "killer chile beer". I will, of course, be continually seeking sour beers as I wander.

Of course, the game plan needs to be flexible, but here are some elements I am pretty sure of (in no particular order):

Some Thoughts on #GABF Award Winners

If you've been following this blog, you know that I attended a couple of GABF sessions last weekend (see 2014 #GABF Members Session and Friday Night #GABF). It was an overwhelming spectacle, and awesomely fun.

But, man, is that a lot of beer!

The competition winners were announced pretty early on Saturday, and you can look at the list at GABF Winners.

For what it is worth, California won the most medals at 46. Colorado won the second most at 39. Those two states together won almost a third of the total medals. Half the medals were won by top 5 states (California: 46, Colorado: 39, Oregan: 22, Texas: 16, Pennsyvania: 12).

2014 #GABF Members Session

Yesterday, of course, was the Members'-Only session of the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). Of course, the SheppyBrew Beer Model and I attended. It was, of course, a great time.

The members-only session is my favorite. It is one of the great benefits of being an AHA member. In fact, I know people who became AHA members just so they could buy tickets to this session of the GABF.

We got in line pretty early, but even still, we were about 3/4 of the way around the Convention Center. The line went really quick once the doors opened, though. We were in the festival before 15 after.

Big crowd on the way in.

They let the line spread out sooner before the doors this year. I thought this was going to cause a nightmare mess, but it turned out very well. 

2011 #GABF Session 1

Ok, so the members only line RULES!! The festival started at 5:30. I was in and had my cup collected by 5:35. As planned, I got to New Glarus early but they did not Belgium Red. Tried their Raspberry Tart instead. It was Ok. I also tried their Blacktop IPA which was fantastic. I thought it was probably my favorite beer of the night.

2016 #GABF Members Only

Well... if you read my post yesterday (see 2016 #GABF Friday Night), you know that the SheppyBrew Beer Model and I were planning on attending GABF again for the Members' Only Saturday afternoon session of GABF.

And indeed we did.

Again, we got in very fast. Much faster than any previous Saturday Sessions we've ever been to.

It was awesome.