The beer world will not revolve around Denver, Colorado, this week. The people attending the Great American Beer Festival and ridiculous number of events throughout the week may make noises like it does, but that’s not the way the beer world works. It’s just too big.
That might be the last bit of real perspective you can expect from me this week, since I’ll be in Denver and be as disoriented as anybody else. Before I head out, one bit of GABF related news.
The GABF Fantasy Draft is back. DRAFT magazine’s version isn’t quite the same as the Fantasy Draught Jonathan Surratt put together at for four years at the The Beer Mapping Project.1 But the prizes are a whole lot better.
Much of the fun, and the pain, the first time around was the draft/draught itself. Waiting for the next pick, hoping that somehow Flying Dog Brewery would make it through the rest of third round and into the fourth (four medals in 2009, as a fourth round pick, you can look it up). This time more than one participant to pick a brewery. Surely everybody will pick Firestone Walker Brewing, Sun King Brewing, Miller Brewing (eight medals in 2008 and six in 2009), Devils Backbone (just one or both?), well, I’m not doing all your homework.
The winner will be the entrant who comes up with the Flying Dogs and La Cumbres (three medals first time out in 2011). Might be a newcomer and might be one that’s be around forever. Thinking about this led me to see look up how many breweries have won medals in all four decades the competition has been held.2 Yes, these are the sorts of things I think of on a Monday morning, cold sober. No predictions will seem like a good topic to explore by late Friday night.
Anyway, there are twelve: Capital Brewery, Sierra Nevada Brewing, Boston Beer, Alaskan Brewing, Full Sail Brewing, Anheuser-Busch, Miller Brewing, Coors Brewing, Marin Brewing, Millstream Brewing (you might have lost that bet, huh?), Goose Island Beer, and Leinenkugel Brewing.
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1 For the record, Surratt is also the web director at DRAFT.
2 Blind judging began in 1988, so there were only two opportunities that decade, and so far only two this decade.