35,000 connoisseurs expected to jam the Colorado Convention Center for the 24th annual Great American Beer Festival would have loved the first one.
It was a low-key gathering of perhaps 800 attendees at Harvest House in Boulder in 1982, a far cry from today’s tasting anthill.
The three-day festival, sponsored by the Boulder-based Brewers Association, takes place Thursday through Saturday and taps 1,669 beers from 380 U.S. breweries, the largest collection of American beers offered in one location.
There were 22 brewers and perhaps twice that many beers at the inaugural, an event remembered fondly by Ed Walsh, a bartender at Old Chicago in Boulder who was among the beer-curious.
“I worked for Old Chicago, and we were starting our big beer campaign, the World Beer Tour,” Walsh said. “My manager, Gary Foreman (now president of the Old Chicago chain) said, ‘We’re going to find out about these new beers.’ We bought a booth. I was supposed to stand by this booth the whole day. We lasted about five minutes. We were like kids at the carnival. There were 35-40 beers. We were dazzled by it.”
Jeff Brown, now president of Boulder Beer Co. (formerly Rockies Brewing), recalled “it was the first tasting on a big scale I had ever been to.” He was at the first one because he owned Jose Muldoon’s restaurant, a co-sponsor (with Pearl Street Market) of the event.
The first GABF, he said, “was in a room sized 50 percent of the amount of people jammed in there. It was simply tables lined up around the room; very casual, very informal.” He kept tasting notes, now lost. “I had very good notes for the first 10-15 beers.”
Some of the brewers in attendance handed out “samples” of full bottles and gave away six-packs at the end of the day rather than haul them home.
There were no prizes. “It was just fun,” recalled Walsh. “There was no pretense at all. The brewers were gracious, humble almost. The prize was your satisfaction of getting your product received.”
Things have changed. This year’s fest covers 144,000 square feet of the massive convention center, including a 44,000-square-foot Beer Garden and Food Marketplace. Volunteers, not brewers or employees, pour 1-ounce samples for hordes of tasters.
The festival’s growth matches that of the craft-beer industry. Sales of beer by small brewers rose 7 percent in 2004 over the previous year, the Brewers Association says. In 2004, sales by craft brewers were just over 7 million barrels, a significant gain but still a drop in the brew kettle compared with the 103 million barrels churned out by Anheuser-Busch.
In addition to the public tasting, there are 2,358 beers from 461 breweries in 69 styles judged in the GABF competition for medals, which will be awarded at the Connoisseur Session at 1:30 p.m. Saturday. Mayor John Hickenlooper, a man whose beery roots run back to his days as co-founder of Wynkoop Brewing Co. in LoDo, will open the session.
This year’s GABF will have to go off without Walsh. “I don’t need that kind of chaos in my life. All these goofy prizes. A prize for chili beer, for God’s sake! You wanna win a prize? Start an acorn beer. Wait, somebody probably already has.”
Staff writer Dick Kreck can be reached at 303-820-1456 or dkreck@denverpost.com.
Chocolate Stout Black Velvets
From the National Beer Wholesalers Association, this recipe serves 6.
Ingredients
1/3 cup sugar, tinted, if desired, with food coloring
One bottle brut champagne, chilled (or one bottle dry cider)
One bottle chocolate stout beer, chilled
One lemon, lime or orange, quartered
Directions
On a small plate, spread out sugar. Moisten rim of each of six wine goblets or pilsner glasses with the citrus wedge; invert glass onto sugar to decoratively frost the rim.
For each drink, tilt glass and slowly pour in champagne until the glass is half-full. Hold a small spoon upside-down over the center of glass, being careful not to disturb the sugar frosting. Slowly pour chocolate stout beer over the spoon to evenly disperse the flow and control the foaming head. The head of beer should stop just below the frosted rim of the glass. Garnish with fruit.
