San Francisco has its sourdough. Florida its oranges. Gumbo in New Orleans.
Denver has, well, Rocky Mountain oysters?
A delicacy, to be sure, but city leaders see Denver’s biggest potential culinary calling card as beer.
The first Denver Beer Fest, launched Friday and running through Sept. 27, is part drinking extravaganza, part marketing campaign. Officials hope it will make Denver a sought-after and publicized destination for aficionados of fine malt beverages.
Not that Denver and Colorado currently fall flat in the beer industry. Colorado perennially ranks No. 1 or No. 2 in national beer production, the industry provides about 21,000 jobs in the state, and the Front Range’s dozens of craft breweries make it one of the most active regions in the U.S.
Yet there’s still room to raise the profile.
“We just naturally had assumed that everybody knew everything about Denver being a great beer town. But that’s not necessarily the case,” said Rich Grant, a beer enthusiast and communications director for Visit Denver, the city’s convention and visitors bureau.
In collaboration with the Boulder-based Brewers Association, Visit Denver created Denver Beer Fest as a way to broaden the reach of the already enormously popular Great American Beer Festival, Sept. 24 to 26, one of the largest in the world.
The 10-day Denver Beer Fest features 130 events ranging from brewery tours to beer-and-food pairing dinners to tappings of specialty beers from local craft brewers.
“Food and beverages are major drivers for tourism,” Grant said. “To do that successfully, you have to ‘own’ the product. We couldn’t promote Denver as a seafood capital, but we have a legitimate claim to being one of the great craft beer capitals in the world.”
Tourism officials can’t yet estimate attendance for Denver Beer Fest events, but Grant noted that central Denver hotels are virtually sold out for the next week — a phenomenon not typically induced by the three-day Great American Beer Festival.
Brewers Association official Julia Herz said she has heard that a number of GABF attendees from outside Colorado are extending their visits to participate in Denver Beer Fest events.
About half of the GABF’s projected 49,000 attendees this year will come from outside metro Denver.
Like most other local craft brewers, Denver-based Great Divide Brewing Co. is hosting tastings, dinners and “meet the brewer” events throughout the Denver fest.
“We’ve already got a very strong beer scene in Colorado and particularly in Denver,” said Great Divide founder Brian Dunn. “The festival is going to reinforce exposure and education, and that will really help us and the industry as a whole.”
Steve Raabe: 303-954-1948 or sraabe@denverpost.com
Beer by the numbers
103 Breweries in Colorado
10% Colorado’s share of national beer production
20,647 Jobs in Colorado’s brewing industry
$6.3 billion Value of beer produced in Colorado in 2008
$127 million Local, state and federal taxes paid in 2008 on beer consumption in Colorado
Source: Brewers Association, Beer Institute
