GABF 2016

Did anybody try Scytale 385 from Great Basin out of Nevada? I think it is one of the top 3-5 imperial stouts I've had.

 

Fulton brewery out of mn had a good IPA called 300 mosaic I really liked. Resin from sixpoint was great and also got a chance to try sip of sunshine.

 

Had my first Melvin Brosaic at the fest and it was full of stars and unicorns.

 

Nice work Colorado:

38 Medals out of 286 (13.2%)
13 Golds
16 Silvers
9 Bronzes

Also congrats to Uberbrew for winning Small Brewing Company!

 

The upset of the comp came in the Export stout category, where Fade to Black finished second.

 

Uber took home a bunch of medals. I've never been to the brewery but every one of their bottled beers I've had is middle of the road at best. Although I heard those might be contract brewed. Got to be in Billings in a few weeks, looking forward to stopping in and checking them out.

 

I think Fort Collins brewing is who does their bottled beer. They also have really good food.

 

Tin Man brewing at Evansville IN had some amazing beers

 

Not sure why, but Colorado's final number of medals seemed lower than years past. Was it me, or did it seem NC medaled in a lot of categories this year. Good for them.

 

J. Wakefield is serious business, and I normally think those sorts of beers are a joke.
Beachwood BBQ's lambic inspired beers tasted like 100% real Belgian ones. There aren't (m)any places that can pull that off.

 

Nah, Denver Beer Co taking gold in wood aged beer takes the cake. Also, ISO: mango blue moon.

 

Went to the Saturday afternoon and my favorites were: Pfriem Family Pilsner and Neshaminy Creek Vienna and Oktoberfest. I stuck to lagers this year and I feel like I had quite few really good Helles as well.

 

I meant it was an upset because it's the first time f2b didn't finish first in a major comp. it was three for three in the gabf with gold's prior to this year.

 

Where can I get two 12 bottle shippers in town?

 

https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...r-where-to-get-a-shipper.454788/#post-5044528

 

Interesting and fun time at GABF this year. I ended up not hitting as many breweries as I wanted to, missed out on some that I really wanted, and ultimately was bummed at 3:45PM when they immediately shut down all the taps. I feel like they should change the cutoff to 3:55 or 4:00PM. After all, if the session is 12-4 - 90% of the people are heading for the doors at 3:45.

Also they stopped letting people get in line for T-shirts at the same time. Should be open later, just this one man's opinion.

We waited in line a long time at Jester King, because of where the Bookstore was, it was hard to have a proper line there. Beers were OK but eclipsed by others. Highlights include Lost Abbey sour beers, Weldwerks, Black Project. And yes I did hit some CO places because some of the beers are hard to get your hands on.

IMO Oxcart from black project was the best Spontaneous beer I had, I thought Jester King's wasn't very good.

Barrel Aged Mexican Achromatic was the best BA Imperial Stout that I had.

DDH Juicy Bits probably the best IPA that I tried, although we missed out on a lot of the IPAs this year.

Beachwood's sours were surpising, and the Toolbox Abricot was very nice.

 

That BA Mexican Achromatic was incredible. One of the best beers I had all weekend in Denver.

The First Draft/Tavour Bottlefest left a bit to be desired. The space to wait in for your time was crowding the kitchen pass of the restaurant, and each session ran past its posted time by 10-15 minutes. Turns out it's pretty hard to have 30 people vacate immediately and bring up 30 more people without running over.
The posted bottle list was not a guarantee of what you could drink. The Tavour people had bottles in front of them on tables with token costs for each, and other bottles behind them in ice chests. The token costs seemed all over the place to me, with HF Anna costing 1 token, and Alchemist cans costing 2. Casey Oak Theory for 3. Exactly 1 bottle of Fou Foune was opened within 2 sessions and got immediately bumrushed and emptied in 30 seconds by 5 people.
People had to cajole the Tavour folks to open bottles sitting behind the tables, with occasionally being told they were just not going to be opened. The whole thing just felt haphazard and rushed, having to go downstairs and get back in line every time if you had multiple sessions. Half the time people were standing around not really wanting any of the available bottles.
Hopefully they tighten things up next year. I think just a simple disclaimer saying no bottles are guaranteed would be nice, but that would probably turn a lot of people off from going.

 

i had a similar reaction my biggest problem was my sesion was all sours. I had to go up and force them to open something other then a sour. The token price were allover the place. in my sesion lots of standing around as peaple waited for rarer beers. The alchmest stuff being 2 or 3 token was odd. Need to be tighned up