A fine day for a beer? Pshaw. Phooey. Balderdash. Today is no mere fine day for a beer. It is a magnificent, glorious, truly sublime day for a beer. And even that is a monumental understatement. Today – Thursday, October 9, in the year we call 2008 – is the start of an utterly mind-blowing, and indeed fine, three days for not one, not two, but close to 2,000 beers.
At this very moment, the doors are opening on the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. This three day extravaganza, expected to quench the thirst of some 46,000 people, is just a roller coaster shy of being the beer drinker’s ultimate amusement park. (Those spinning rides? Not so necessary, as more than a few of those 46,000 will likely experience wooziness of their own making.)
Some more staggering numbers for the staggering crowds: 432 American breweries will be serving roughly 1,800 of their finest beverages at the festival. Not four breweries. Not thirty-two. That’s four hundred thirty two and XX/100. And 479 breweries have a whopping 2,950 beers entered in competition in 75 different style categories.
No, really. 75. Take the number 15, multiply it by 5. That’s what we’re talking about.
An expected 18,000 gallons of beer are expected to be served. That’s 144,000 pints – the real, genuine 16 oz. kind – or nearly 165,000 so-called pints in the standard 14 oz. glass. The equivalent of an astronomical 192,000 12 oz. bottles or cans. That would translate to more than 8 1/2 beers per person at the average Tampa Bay Rays home game this year. Nearly 20 cans for every resident of Wasilla, Alaska. A bottle for every person ever to serve in the Peace Corps. Almost 9 beers for every woman Wilt Chamberlain ever slept with (by the late scoring machine’s own preposterous estimate, of course).
It’s a lot of beer.
It’s a battle for bragging rights, a craft beer tour of the United States, a source of inspiration as competing breweries prod each other towards innovation. Most fascinating of all, though, might be the Pro-Am booth nestled amongst the big boys – a revolving lineup of 60 different award winning homebrews on tap, all brewed in volume in partnership with commercial breweries. This is where dreams – or even waves – are made.
While high-fiving frat boys and their graying, pot-bellied counterparts aggressively pursue quantity, flavorless quantity, in search of a buzz they hope to regret, the true thrills lie in chasing the unknown, the unexpected. Those beers that are perhaps but a passing moment in time, never to be brewed again; those beers that might be a glimpse into the future.
And as you scan the tap handles on the horizon, should a sombrero-donning chihuahua catch your eye, it’s an invitation for neither a bad taco nor a slice of lime in a skunky, jaundiced brew. Quite the contrary. Although it is brewed with Mexican piloncillo, No Hoplo Ingles hardly draws its inspiration from south of the border. Born of humble roots in an Arizona driveway, it is a Belgian-style strong ale brewed by Papago Brewing in Scottsdale, Arizona in conjunction with homebrewer and student of beer David Schollmeyer. If you haven’t heard of him before, you have now. Lightly hopped (what’s in a name?), No Hoplo Ingles dangles floral and fruity esters, those favorite temptresses of Belgian yeasts, before your nose. It seduces with dizzying sweetness, then strikes with a spicy finish and sneaky alcoholic strength.
It’s not the first beer you should try, lest havoc be wreaked with your palate. It’s not the only beer you should try, lest the world pass you by. And there may be a hundred others (or a few hundred, or a thousand) just as elusive outside the wondrous confines of the Colorado Convention Center. But No Hoplo Ingles is surely a reminder, on this finest of days for a beer, of why we drink: Not just in a hopelessly (or, heaven forbid, hoplessly) romantic hunt for unattainable perfection, but in a valiant and inexhaustible crusade to experience the new and reimagine the familiar.
At GABF 2007, Brewers Association President Charlie Papazian
tries to hide his disappointment after realizing that he's
not talking to Mark McGwire after all.
All photos are from GABF 2007, ©2007 Jason E. Kaplan
