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I am a huge sour beer fan. In fact, I found myself going after more sour beers at the festival than any other style. Berliner Weisse, wild ales, etc, all made it into my GABF tasting cup. I also found many lager beers, and fruit beers appearing in my cup. So much of it was for research, development, and seeing what others in the industry were doing. There are some killer chile beers out there!

I started my day by heading to Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project. The brewery sits in an industrial park and is quite hidden among other units of the same color and size. Upon arrival I realized that they had not one, but three units that were occupied by their wares.

Crooked Stave tasting room

If you don’t know Crooked Stave is known for their use of brettanomyces, or wild yeasts, along with bacterial strains like lactobacilius and pediococus to create beautiful, funky, sour beers. Chad Yakobson, their head brewer and owner, has pioneered many brewers into this style of beer and understanding the use of brett in particular in beers. His work has been documented almost daily on his page The Brettanomyces Project.

Barrel Aging, Crooked Stave

Crooked Stave fermenters and foeders

The fermentation and aging cellars were amazing, pristine and inspiring to look upon. I need to figure out how to get a foeder into the brewery!

Once finished at the brewery I headed over to the tasting room to sample some of these delicious elixirs. The Colorado Sage was one of my favorites along with one of their year round offerings, the sour blonde ale. Nightmare on Brett Cherry Street was pretty delicious and so was the Key Lime Pi (insert Pi symbol/letter). Not a bad beer in the bunch.

Crooked Stave Tasting Room

The festival was much busier than it was the previous night. Packed wall-to-wall with people having a great time is a fun way to spend the evening. Having a better understanding of how the festival worked and its layout was key this time. Knowing exactly where to go and which beers to try made it more fluid of a movement through the rows of people.

I did make my way over to the Pacific and Pacific Northwest section as I had intended. Worthy Brewing made my list with their pale ale, but a clear winner was from Ladyface Ale Companie with their Flamberge Flemish Red.

A big challenge from this festival is trying to recall everything that you tried. The beers were all solid and there were a lot of lager beer style, sours, and English styles this year. Wicked Weed Brewing blew me away with their bourbon aged Russian as did Cellarmaker Brewing with their Batch 1 Porter. Needless to say I need to go down through a list of participating breweries and try to remember everything I experienced!

Cheers!