I made my annual pilgrimage to the GABF on Wednesday, September 22nd.  Thursday is the day we set up our booth and things started off normally.  We take our own keg cooler to make our booth resemble our bar at Springfield Brewing Company and this year we added some extra love to bring our pub to the GABF hall by adding a wooden façade to our booth and hanging some really cool chalk board signs that "Cat" Scalzo, one of our servers, made.

Once we entered the Colorado Convention Center, the writing was on the wall that this year's GABF was not just another year.  The expo hall was greatly enlarged this year and brewers and beer enthusiasts had more space to mosh around during the 3-day festival.

The Thursday night session began as always with a troop of bagpipers heralding the opening of the Great American Beer Festival.  This was my cue to wander around and taste beer.  Unlike most years, I wandered around tasting beer most of the time, as opposed to pouring beer from fest-goers.  There was an absolutely amazing display of Great American Beers in the festival hall!  In past years there have always been a lot of great beers, but for me this year was different.  I was a mix of emotions as a brewer; inspired, proud of my brewing colleagues and bummed out because our own great beers did not win a medal.  But not winning a medal is much easier to swallow when presented with a giant wall of solid competition.

Munich may be home to Oktoberfest, which is an amazing event that I need to return to one day, but the Munich Oktoberfest does not have a fraction of the beer selection of the GABF.  US brewers were once dabbling with some exotic styles.  No longer are sour beers cute little experiments brewed by a brave few, but serious examples of their European ancestors brewed by some exceptional brewers using exceptionally impressive packaging methods.  The bottom line is that the GABF is a display of a huge variety of Great American Beers.

If you have never been to this event, love beer, and enjoy the company of a huge crowd of crazed beer samplers who roar with the intensity of a college football stadium every time, and I do mean every time, that a sampling glass is dropped you will love the GABF!  Next year's festival dates are September 16-18, 2010.