My First GABF

My friend Judy earned her 10th plate at the Flying Saucer and thus earned airfare for two and tickets into the Great American Beer Festival in Denver Colorado.  I was lucky enough she asked me to be her travel companion for the trip.

The Saucer bought tickets to the Friday night session and Tracy and Joe bought tickets for us for the Thursday night session too!

This isn't my first beer festival, but it is surely the biggest one I have ever been to.  But, it is well run and with the GABF app, you can preplan the breweries you want to visit and it has maps to show where you have been and where to head for your next choice!  The app also allows you to rank the beers and make other notes.  Very handy when the next morning you are entering information into Untappd for long term beer tracking.

There were breweries from all around the country.  When I was entering my beers into Untappd, I was surprised how many were very small breweries that had a small number of total entries.

My goal was to visit breweries that you can't get in Texas and have beers I hadn't had before.  Of course, no matter how careful I was, I found several I had previously.  Still, I have added at least 150 beers I haven't had before, so that is a huge win.

I am so glad we had tickets for two nights because there is just NO WAY to make a dent in one night.  There are over 580 breweries with over 2,700 beers.  Two nights isn't enough, but I hit every brewery I had planned on and many more.

I will earn my 10th plate before the 2014 GABF and I will be back!!