Beer, beer, beer and more beer—all American beer, you’ll find it here
One of the most remarkable reasons to live in Denver is that you can participate in one of the world’s greatest and biggest beer events—the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). Modeled after the Great British Beer Festival, this amazing annual event is at your front door.
While 3,000 plus beers or more than 35,500 gallons of beer, to be exact, was served to 49,000 attendees from 616 U.S. breweries, the Denver city economic impact last year was somewhere around $7 million. This year, the event took place October 10-12 at the Colorado Convention Center. Attendees got a chance to meet with brewers and be the first to sample award-winning beers as they are announced.
Homegrown Event is Uniquely Denver
The GABF here in Denver has been a major part of America’s amazing and successful beer story, now being emulated all around the word. Last year’s event covered 84 categories, covering 134 beer styles. It was judged by 188 judges from 11 countries. All of this was started by a man named Charlie Papazian.
In 1981 Charlie Papazian was attending the Great British Beer Festival in London when he came up with a brilliant idea, why not have something similar back home. Being that he lived in Boulder, back home meant here. But he would make a fundamental differentiation; the American version would be about talking beer, not talking brands. He and Denial Bradford, the cofounder of the festival, asked that all the competitors not behave as competitors, rather see this as an event, an opportunity to allow the tide to lift all boats.
The following year, June 4, 1982 the first Great American Beer Festival was underway, held in the ballroom of the Hilton Harvest House on Twenty-Eighth Street in Boulder. The event included forty-seven beers from twenty-four different breweries for 800 attendees at twenty-two different spots in the ballroom. The festival was moved to Denver in 1984. As it grew, the event found its home in 2000 at the Colorado Convention Center. Last year, tickets sold out in 45 minutes. Amazing when you compare it to 2007 when it took an entire week to sell out. This year it took only 20 minutes for this homegrown event, that is uniquely Denver, to sell out.
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