This past Saturday marked the 2nd annual Savor: an American craft beer & food experience, held at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. This year, Tim and I went with our friends Tyler and Allison, who came with us last year as well.

In a nutshell, Savor rocked. Savor draws a lot of big names in brewing, and I was lucky enough to get a chance to talk to many of them this year!

We spotted homebrewing guru Charlie Papazian (who remembered taking our picture last year!) and chatted with him for a bit. Tim asked him about his bee hives, from which he plans to harvest honey and make mead this year. Very cool!

I also got to talk to Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione, whose popularity in the brewing industry is ever-growing these days (probably due to the fact that he’s a genuinely nice guy, whose enthusiasm about brewing has done great things for the industry). I was surprised that he actually recognized me from last year! We talked about Burton Baton, his oak-aged Imperial IPA, which is rich and delicious, with a lovely vanilla/oak character.

I was also very excited to meet Greg Koch, founder of Stone Brewing, for the first time. Greg gave the keynote at this year’s Craft Brewers Conference, where he debuted his “I Am A Craft Brewer” video, which truly displays the camaraderie and passion of craft brewers today. You can tell just by talking to him that he really is that passionate about brewing. Plus, he’s a helluva good guy for letting me use his phone when I lost the rest of my group at the end of the event! He took a good Twitpic of us as well:

As I said, I lost my group at the end of the event, and I found myself chit-chatting with Greg, which somehow led to Tim and I tagging along with some of the brewers to a place called Matchbox. There, I got to meet Adam Avery of Avery Brewing Company, Todd Alström of Beer Advocate, and Chris Black, owner of Falling Rock Tap House in Denver, CO. (Chris, by the way, was a really great guy!)

Anyway, back to Savor. We talked to another Stone Brewing fellow named Michael, who poured us some Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale, a black IPA, and Stone Cali-Belgique IPA, an American-Belgo style beer. Both were awesome, and we had a lot of fun talking to Michael, who seemed to really enjoy the fact that I knew what Carafa III was!

Over at the Stoudt’s Brewing table was none other than co-founder Carol Stoudt, who turns out is a very enthusiastic lady! I mentioned to her that my brother is getting married at the brewery this fall, which she seemed happy to hear.

Russian River brewmaster Vinnie Cilurzo poured us Consecration, a barrel-aged dark sour ale. It’s aged for 6 months in cabernet sauvignon barrels with currants. Amazingly complex beer. Tim and I mentioned to him that we hope to open a brewery of our own some day, which he was very encouraging about.

Brewer Chris Basso manned the Brooklyn Brewery table, where he poured us Brooklyn Local 1 and Brooklyn Local 2. He described the differences and similarities of the two recipes. They have similar malt bills, and both finish very dry. Local 1 uses raw sugar from Mauritius and Belgian yeast, very complex and highly drinkable. Local 2 uses dark Belgian sugar and raw wildflower honey, which adds complexity to this dark, fruity, chocolatey brew. Excellent beers.

At the very end of the night, we meandered over to the Lagunitas table, where Ron Lindenbush poured us a vertical tasting of Olde GnarlyWine. He had bottles from 2004-2009 (minus 2005) and poured us a taste of each. The barleywine got much smoother as it got older. It also got us pretty toasted. Oops!

I’ve got a lot more beer and food highlights from Savor up my sleeve, so stay tuned for Part 2!