My Friday Night #GABF Plan

If you've been following my blog over the past couple days, you know I've started to formulate a Game Plan for the Great American Beer Festival. In case you have not been following along, you can catch up with #GABF Game Plan Beginnings and #GABF Week (I've been slacking).

Do I need a Game Plan? Probably not, but I like to have one. When you walk into the huge hall at the festival, it is a bit overwhelming, and I find that it helps to have at least some sort of direction to follow. So, at least for the first night I always write down a plan. This is the first year I am not going to the Thursday night session, so this year, Friday Night is the first night I have a plan for.

This year, it looks like dropping the kids off where they need to be is going to introduce complications to the time-line, so the plan depends on when we get to the convention center. If things get too terribly screwed up, we might have to move some of the beer drinking to the Saturday session.


So, here we go...

Friday October 11

5:30 pm - 6:30 pm: Get into the hall, grab something to eat. Make our way to the Beer & Food Pavilion. If we have time, sample random beers on our way to the Beer & Food Pavilion.

• D12 - DESTIHL
• D22 - Sun King Brewing Company
• D27 - Three Floyds Brewing Company (Zombie Dust)
• G17 - Firestone Walker Brewing Company (Parabola)
• K33 - Russian River Brewing Company (only if they end up having more than what the list says they have)
• L29 - Troegs Brewing Company

 6:30 pm - 7:00 pm:  West Coast Brew meets Rocky Mountain Burgers in the Beer & Food Pavilion.

7:00 pm - 7:30 pm: Try to get to any beers we didn't get to in the 5:30 - 6:30 block, plus if we have time:

• P23 - Lagunitas Brewing Company

7:30 pm - 8:00 pm: Big Beers from Little Breweries in the Brewers Studio Pavilion.

8:00 pm - 9:00 pm: Visit any brewers not visited before and then if we have time hit the following. If we still have time, wander around seeing what other breweries grab our attention.

• R27 - Blackberry Farm Brewery
• R28 - Blackstone Brewing Company
• S13 - Cool Springs Brewery

9:00 pm - 10:00 pm: Scope things out for Saturday. For the most part, stop drinking beer and start drinking water. Check out some of the Brewer's Guilds.


And then, head home and get rest for the next day.

Stay tuned ... I'll let you know how things go. You can check out the latest on GABF here: http://blog.ericshepard.com/search/label/GABF

Go BlackHawks!