- Bottoms Up (RSS)The GABF 2008: That was a festival that was
By William Brand
Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 8:59 am in Uncategorized.
This is such a great photo that I thought I’d post it. It’s an overall view of the Great American Beer Festival in the Colorado Convention Center in Denver this past weekend.
Note the Designated Drivers sign at the right. They were serving free Tommyknocker Sodas, made by the Idaho Springs, CO. brewpub of the same name.
The You Be The Judge stand, front center, gave fest-goers a chance to sit down for a few minutes with a GABF beer judge and discuss a beer or a beer style.
Final GABF stats from the association:
- Attendance: 46,000; volunteers, 2,600, breweries at fest: 432, beers at the fest: 2,052.
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October 15th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
[...] Just… Wow. GABF was something else. According to William Brand, there were 46,000 attendees, 2,600 volunteers, 432 breweries, and a staggering 2,052 beers [...]
October 15th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
i went last year it was fantastic…pub crawling in denver was as much fun as the fest..i look forward to returnig..on the subject of beerfests..why does sacramento have more and better beerfests than we do here in the bay area?
October 15th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
True, Sacto has a couple of good ones. But we don’t do too badly, although there hasn’t been anything really gigantic for a long time.
Of course, coming up in February is San Francisco Bay Area Beer Week, there will be literally dozens of events.
But I’d say the barleywine fest in February at the Toronado in San Francisco and the IPA and Double IPA fests at the Bistro are hard to beat, for variety and unusual beers. The annual Breastfest at Marin Bewing in early summer is one fine festival Also, the San Francisco Brewer’s Guild has a fest on the Jeremiah O’Brian, the Liberty ship, each Labor Day.
Also, the beer pavilion at the Slow Food Nation expo at Fort Mason last month was totally amazing.
What we lack these days are gigantic festivals with each brewery pouring one or two beers. Don’t know why. Maybe it’s because we have such variety that a big fest like that feels kind of ho-hum. I dunno. What do you think?
November 24th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
[...] at home, through blog posts and Twitter updates, and was amazed at the quantity and quality of coverage. Beer Sage of BeerNews.org had a complete live-blog of the awards ceremony, and Craft Brew Cast [...]