Now that I’ve settled back into normal life (which is kind of a bummer), it’s time for me to gather my thoughts and write about my experiences at this year’s Great American Beer Festival!

It was of course amazing. I didn’t quite feel the complete shock and awe upon first walking into the festival like I did my first time last year, but it was still a pretty impressive site to see. With 450 breweries and over 2000 beers, the Colorado Convention Center was filled to the brim with an astounding number of delicious beers and thirsty beer lovers.

We went to the Thursday and Saturday afternoon sessions this year. They had a new VIP entrance for AHA members at all the sessions, minus the Saturday afternoon AHA members only session. It was pretty sweet because they let the VIP line enter the festival early, but I think I preferred the excitement of the main entrance, the line for which looks something like this:

Our first stop at the festival was New Glarus, a brewery that is perpetually surrounded by hype for their amazing beer which can only be found in the state of Wisconsin. Not surprisingly, even though we got there early, the line was ridiculous  and beer hadn’t even started pouring yet!

But the beer was well worth it. I had the Old English Porter, a brown porter with a lovely sourness. I picked a great one for my first New Glarus beer!

As one might expect, GABF is one of the best places to spot rock star brewers and other notable beer figures. We saw Charlie Papazian (president of the Brewers Association), Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione (who recognized me yet again!), Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver, Avery Brewing founder Adam Avery, Stoudt’s Brewing brewmaster Carol Stoudt, and beer author Randy Mosher, to name a few.

I got a chance to talk to Patrick Rue, founder of The Bruery, a majorly up-and-coming brewery in California. I congratulated him on his whirlwind success and gave my praises for his Autumn Maple (easily one of my favorite beers at the fest), and found that he was an incredibly humble and very nice guy!

We also got to talk to Fred Karm, brewmaster of Hoppin’ Frog, a brewery that I believe is really going places. This was the second time we met Fred, and I was once again impressed with his friendly, humble demeanor and his wonderful beer. His Hop Master’s Abbey, a Belgian-style double IPA, was another one of my favorites at the fest.

When we meandered over to Redstone Meadery (where I tried the delicious Nectar of the Hops, a dry-hopped mead), Tim met the meadery’s founder David Myers, who was generous enough to allow Tim to drill him with mead-making questions. I think Tim picked up some great tips!

We got to talk to brewers from a couple of breweries local to us in the Philly area. We got some tips on Saison fermentation from the brewer at Nodding Head, one of our favorite local breweries. We also saw brewers Tim and Matt from Iron Hill in Phoenixville, our go-to brewpub in our area.

New to the GABF this year was Metropolitan Brewing, founded by Doug and Tracy Hurst. We had been following them on Twitter for a while, and were very excited to meet them and try their amazing lagers. Really, really cool people!

We tasted so much beer. Some of the noteworthy ones that I tried were beers from the ever popular Pizza Port/The Lost Abbey, including Way Heavy (Scotch ale), Ernest’s Silky Smoove (oatmeal stout), and The Lost Abbey’s Red Poppy (Barrel-aged Flanders-Style Red Ale).

Dogfish Head had their latest insane creation, Chicha. For this beer, Sam and a few other lucky folks actually chewed up purple maize, formed them into lovely little spit cakes, and used them in the mash. The enzymes in saliva naturally break down the starches into fermentables. Sounds nasty, but everything gets boiled after the spit goes in, so it’s perfectly sanitary! It was pretty good, very light in body, dry, kind of wit-like.

And finally, one of the breweries I was incredibly impressed with was Terrapin. Gamma Ray is an 11% ABV wheat wine, brewed with tons of honey. It was friggin’ amazingly tasty. Depth Charge, which was actually brewed jointly by Terrapin and Left Hand Brewing, was incredible! It’s an espresso milk stout that’s smooth and creamy with decadent chocolate and espresso notes. Bravo!

You know, I could go on, I really could… But if I covered every amazing beer and awesome person I met at GABF, I’d be writing for days. These were some of the highlights from the festival itself; in my next post, I’ll talk more about my trip to Colorado as a whole, which was equally, if not more, amazing than the GABF!