GABF Day Two

I started to write out my activities from 'Day Two' of the GABF when I realized that I was summarizing a lot of my experience in order to cram it all into a single post, and at the same time, boring myself to death. The amount of self editing that I was doing was necessary because of the scope of my activities and at the same time was limiting my ability to adequately express my experience. This bothered me and so I thought that I would briefly summarize it here and go into more detail in future posts in an attempt to focus on individual events that seemed relevant to this blog and personally interesting. So, in this vain here is the summary part.

1. After waking early with an intestinal reaction that I believe was caused by some of the homebrewed sour beers I sampled the night before at the KROK gathering, I headed downtown to check out the Great Divide Brewery and meet up with a couple of fellow Zymurgeeks and Jason, the head brewer for Seabright Brewing Company of Santa Cruz for beer samples and to tour the brewery.
   
2. We went to Breckenridge for a quick lunch and I had the 2220 red ale which is nicely balanced and quenching. Some friends/homebrewers from Santa Cruz stopped by to visit before we left.


3. Later in the day I trekked back up to the Cheeky Monk to sample some Belgians. I joined a table of marketers to chat with the old brewer of Achouffe and also the president of Duvel/Ommegang in N.Y. Simon Thorpe, before rolling back down to the festival.


4. At the festival I was invited to attend the 'Farm To Table' event that paired local food prepared by the Culinary School of the Rockies with a few breweries including Deschutes. I tried the Pork Cheek with a sour red ale from Deschutes that was a perfect match.


5. Next, back into the mosh pit of beer tasting before again hooking up with friends at the Hyatt for a relaxed pint or two.


6. Then we swaggered up to the Marriott basement and attended a VIP event to partake of some of the left over beers that were entered into the competition but didn't get opened. We rubbed elbows with some of the GABF brewers while sampling the remaining competition beers and eating pizza.
   
7. Finally I caught a taxi back to my hotel for some much needed rest before my final day in Denver.

As I read back over what I just wrote I amaze myself that I was able to carry out this feat considering the entire day and night were fueled with a steady stream of beer, and somewhere in that flurry of inebriated activity are some tales worthy of telling. I'll fill you in. How was your time at the fest? Leave a comment.