GABF Day 3 - Saturday In Denver

Sam Adams Longshot Competition

I woke up Saturday morning feeling a bit less than awesome. Actually, I was totally hung over from trying to keep up with the brewers the night before. Lesson learned: never go head to head drinking against a brewer.

Even more so: don't even try to look like you're keeping up with a room full of brewers. Accustomed to having one or two beers with dinner, my tolerance won't stack up with any brewer.

Still, I managed to mope to the site of the Sam Adam's Longshot Competition awards ceremony. I had a few bites of their delicious catered breakfast, lots of water, and Jennie helpfully forced an Alka-Seltzer down me. Plop plop, fizz fizz!

The Long Shot competition is structured to have one employee brewer and two outsider amateur brewers win. All three of the winning beers will be scaled up and brewed by Sam Adams for a period of time. This year the rules specified that the beers fit within category 23, the wildcard slot for beers that don't fit into the other beer judging categories.

The awards ceremony started with brunch and offered up a fine selection of Sam Adams beers on Tap, and a few of their rare beers in bottles. They also had three of their employee finalists pouring samples of their beer for a final vote.

After everyone had time for breakfast, Jim Koch himself announced the Longshot winners. Rodney Kibzey, Richard Roper, and Caitlin DeClercq all took the stage to have a beer in a giant trophy mug with Jim.

Member's Session at GABF

Next stop on the agenda was the Saturday morning session of GABF, the member's session. This session is usually the best, and they even hand out glass tasting glasses instead of the usual plastic tasting cups required the other sessions.

The first order of business was the awards ceremony, where the actual GABF medals are announced and handed out by Charlie Papazian. Some great breweries and great beers pulled down medals this year.

After the awards, the next step was securing seats in the Beer and Food Pavilion. The first session was paring exotic wood aged beers with food, featuring Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head and Sean Paxton. Sean is popular and Sam is a beer rock star, so the seats were already filling up 30 minutes before the event.

We were treated to a humorous presentation which included actually smoking meat on the stage. Awesome. I'll have some video of this in the future.

The final big event I stopped at was the Fire & Ice throwdown in the Food and Beer pavilion. Here Maui Brewing faced off with Alaskan Brewing in a pairing competition. Garrett Marrero paired his Maui beers with Hawaiian cuisine, which means in this case poke. Curtis Holmes of Alaskan paired his beers with salmon and crab.

The highlight of the night was Garrett's wild pairing. This poke dish was intended to be sprinkled lightly with crushed hop pellets, but a misunderstanding with the culinary students modified the recipe. My tiny cup of raw tuna had at least two hop pellets sprinkled over the top (see photo at right).

What bitter decadence, chewing on raw ahi tuna and maybe a couple of dollars worth of hops. Some people obviously thought the accidental overhopping was too much, but I rather enjoyed my hop salad. Am I crazy, or just a hop nut?

After this final pairing, Jennie and I called it a night. We packed up a bit early to avoid the notorious Saturday night GABF crowds and walked back to the Bed & Breakfast.

See more of my day 3 photos on my twitter page, and don't forget to check out Crafting Beer with (512) Brewing Company if you're interested in a visual exploration of the craft brewing process. Cheers!