The GABF – 27 years young – and still rocking.

The crowd rushing up the stairs to enter the GABF. Photo: Gregg Wiggins

Photo: I didn’t see the people in hop costumes this year, but Mid-Atlantic Brewing News photographer/writer Gregg Wiggins caught the quartet on their way to beer-soaked merriment.

A Scottish bagpipe band opens each GABF session.  They’re the Centennial State Pipes and Drums from Denver. Photo: Gregg Wiggins

So here I am at the GABF running way, way behind, naturally. This is a wild scene.  Anyway…about last night:

It was a night of tasting framed by  Coors Pre-Prohibition Lager at the beginning and New Belgium’s Eric’s Sour Peach Ale.  In between I tasted three versions of Collaborative Evil , one by Fifty Fifty Brewing, the hot new brewery in Truckee (CA.), one by the brewers at Flossmoor Station , a suburb south of Chicago,  and one by Zac Triemert, co-founder of  Lucky Bucket Brewing, a new Nebraska brewery.

Randy Mosher,  a Seibel Institute brewing expert and author of many books on brewing (his latest is Radical Brewing), steered me and a friend of his, Jennie Hatton, a Philadelphia book agent, (more about Randy’s book in the next post) to Collaborative Evil, a Belgian-style dark strong ale, made with raisins, honey, Mexican and Indian sugars, orange peel and black cardamon.

But first the Coors. I grew up out here in Coors country and I always wondered if just maybe way, way back Coors made something other than light lager. I couldn’t imagine the tough old goats who homesteaded out here swilling rice water.

The answer is yes, way back, Coors made excellent beers. Keith Villa, the brewer  in charge of the Blue Moon beers, dug out an old recipe from the early 1900s, well before Prohibition began in 1920. It’s a blend of 2-row  Moravian barley, grown for Coors in the Rocky Mountain West; hops include Mt. Hood, a brewer at the stand said. That’s a modern hop, but the idea was to duplicate the beer as closely as possible.

They did a great job. It’s the color old gold, with a mild, aromatic hoppy nose, Although the color wasn’t dark enough, it tasted a bit like a Vienna lager: Gordon Biersch Marzen, but a bit more restrained. It was mildly sweet, never bitter. Damn good. I give it THREE STARS PLUS.

(And thanks to Don Russell, who writes the Joe Sixpack column, for the tip about the beer.)

Collaborative Evil was a treat.  And each version was different.  I really liked Fifty Fifty’s version. Todd Ashman nailed it. Aged in wood, it has lots of vanilla on the nose, but the taste was complex with all those spices and the wood intertwining. Nothing to swill, but a delightful sipper.

Flosmoor’s version was a bit sweeter, Lucky Bucket’s had less wood in the nose. Fascinating.

I’ve written about Eric’s Ale before. It started as an experiment by a brewer at New Belgium. Now it’s a regular on New Belgium’s Lips of Faith circuit and it pops up _ draft only at the best beer bars aroun the city. You can read about it here.