GABF Recap

For those of you who read our last article on our GABF trip, I will pick up where I left of and try to recall a handful of details.

We set out on this year’s festival adventure with high hopes and optimism when we entered our 4 beers into the largest beer competition in the United States. Unfortunately, competition was stiff with over 8,000 beer entries, and we did not have the privilege of earning a medal in this year’s awards ceremony. We did, however, manage to have a great time chatting with folks and pouring our beers at the festival. We arrived at our aforementioned undersized AirBnb on Wednesday night and began to unpack and get settled in. Thursday morning, we headed to the Colorado Convention Center to pick up our badges and set up our booth for the festival. At 5:30pm the first session started and we were immediately overjoyed by the attention we had been getting for Island Baby from surrounding brewers/volunteers who had tried it. Within the first 30 minutes we had several people who had been specifically pointed in our direction to try the beer as well as a few repeat tasters.

On Friday morning, we headed out to Boulder, CO to check out some OG craft breweries, Avery and Left Hand. Our solo kitchen team worker, Kyle, just happens to be the biggest Left Hand fan there is so needless to say he left with a mountain of merch and a belly full of stouts. We then headed back to town and went to grab some lunch. I would not feel right if I didn’t give a plug here to a little place called Bourbon Grill, located on Colfax road in Denver. This spot is one of my favorite places ever, serving up bourbon chicken, nuclear orange mac and cheese about the slowest service imaginable. If you are ever in town, do yourself a favor and check it out, you might regret it.

Where was I? Ah. That evening we headed back to the festival and poured at the evening session until 10pm. Saturday morning ended up being a little hectic since our Uber driver decided to sit downtown for 10 minutes before heading our way, which lead me to just cancelling the ride, driving us downtown and paying $30 for parking across the street. We ended up making it inside on time and got situated for the 2 hour+ awards ceremony. Once we finished up in there, we headed again out to the festival floor and poured at our booth.

At the end of the day Saturday, we were beat. We headed out for some drinks and food but ultimately headed back to the house fairly early to get some rest in preparation for the 16 hour drive home.

Sunday morning we packed, cleaned and busted out of Denver around 9am. Fast forward to 2am Monday morning and we all made it back to Black Star safe and sound. We all lived happily ever after. The end.