GABF 2017

Not sure how I should take this? But yes it was the worst beer I have had .

There was some really good beers but no way did I have a beer this year that I was blown away by. Not one.

 

So who's having a bottle share around the convention center? I brought an FO

 

Just got back, had five pours of utopias, I'm trashed. Beer of the night? Baptista. That beer is so goddamned smooth, and the cinnamon is money. Had a stout from taxman that was awesome sauce as well.

 

Don't know about y'all but I'm ready for some GABF leftovers with no lines for the next month or so...

 

Reflecting back sober, there isn't one out of state hyped beer that we didn't have an equal or better version of last night. Mornin delight? Coffee maple medianoche. King sue? (*). Zombie dust? Shit, everyone has a great citra pale ale. The same can be said from other regional perspective. Last night reaffirmed my suspicion that the need to trade is gone. Whatever hot shit beer shows up, if it's not here, within months someone local will be doing something along the same lines if they aren't already.

 

Heading to Boulder/Denver tomorrow. What should be my top priority bars for GABF leftovers?

 

We're getting close, but Great Notion was spitting hot fire that we can't compete with.

 

Missed GABF this year but drank my way through Fort Collins yesterday. Stopped by Jessup Farm Barrel House and they were super pumped about their Gold win. I had 6-7 of their beers and the gold winner wasn't even the best of them. That place is pumping out amazing stuff.

Tap and Handle has a bunch of Casey and other amazing stuff on tap right now. Also, I agree with the sentiment above on Mountain Sun. Wowowowowow (you can still get all of it at Southern Sun at least).

 

I was at the Homebrewers show, first time and it is quite a party.

Hit a lot of the bigs, really liked Marshall zukof on coneac, odd 13 had many excellent brews, surprisingly not impressed with weld werks, and had several excellent local spruce beers.

Avery is still my fav Colorado Brewer. Just awsum beer I. Every way!!!

 

With only a few exceptions, I still think like 95% of the BA and/or pastry stouts out there taste the same. I had so many of the "you have to try this one..." and it's just more of the same. Seems like a lot of effort could be saved just by grabbing whatever is convenient.
Medianoche Reserve was actually one of the only notable ones. That stuff is the real deal.

 

Coming to town tonight...anything interesting still around town?

 

I'm with you on the pastry stouts. I had do many, they blended tohether. Baptista was the only one that really stood out as being a great beer. I was sorry I wasted time in line for half of them. On another note, I really thought superpower was on another level this go round. @dauss has his game on lockdown.

 

IPA-wise, the best traditional one I had was the fresh hopped Hop Vivant from Mountain Sun. Boxing Bear had a good one, too. On the haze front, Great Notion's was up there with Trillium, IMO. I got a chance to drink a decent amount of Congress Street and Dialed In on Wednesday, and Juice Box and Juice Jr. are no worse IMO.

 

I'm ready to take a break from drinking beer!

 

Juice Box has become my #1 NEIPA... I could smell it from 10 feet away!

Need Hop Vivant! Does Mountain Sun pour anywhere around town?

 

Yep! I thought Juice box was the best hoppy offering I had! Amazing!

 

Not sure if it's the fresh hopped version, but Vine Street has Hop Vivant on right now. Well, at least they did a couple days ago. It's a former Alpha King winner and was pretty much hands down the best DIPA in Colorado for years. It's still on par with our absolute best.

 

GABF Saturday evening session was different.
First off, as predicted, some breweries had already "kicked" some of their beers before it even started. However, another strange thing is that we really didn't find a lot of long lines. Black Project, Weldwerks, Modern Times, Bells, Avery, Rare Barrel were the only places that had a long line (that I noticed)- and FATE for some reason. But we were able to get pours from Cellarmaker, Toppling Goliath, Bottle Logic with no lines whatsoever. Central Waters as well. So without a line, you can get virtually unlimited pours of your chosen beer. So I had 3 pours of Mornin' Delight, 4 pours of Darkstar November.

There was a big crowd around the Melvin party bus all night long. I was stoked to try Ch-Ch-Cherry Bomb! (3 times).

Something I remembered from the previous years. The last ~30 min of the event, this kind of "buzz" starts emanating from the crowd. It's like a continuous droning roar.
Black Project "covert" was the most interesting/unique thing I tried I think.

Also 850AM ran a report about GABF this morning and the reporter said he tried a lot of beers that had diacetyl in them, which is weird (he didn't even define diacetyl correctly) and seems like kind of a minor point compared to everything else that was going on. It's funny how major news outlets never seem to get the beer stuff right.

 

I only got diacetyl from one beer over the course of 2 visits. Granted I was being kind of picky, but that's really good. Most years about 1/4 of the beers I try have issues. Some more serious than others, obviously. Maybe I was lucky or the reporter tried everything I didn't. IMO, the overall quality was way higher than any other year I can recall. Back in 2012 I swear almost every other beer I had was horrible.

 

True on Thursday night as well. I couldn't believe how small most of the lines were outside the rare heavy hitter.