The Great American Beer Festival in Denver, CO is the granddaddy of all brewfests. This year’s event kicks off tomorrow with 460+ breweries serving up 2,375 beers to 49,000+ attendees over three days.  Needless to say, if you’re attending you’ll want to be choosy. The pours may only be one ounce at a time, but 2,375 ounces is still a lot of beer. (That’s almost 198 12 oz beer equivalents, if you’re curious.)   I do want to go – once – mostly just to see the pure, overwhelming pageantry of it all. 

Even more beers have been entered into the competition.  This year the Festival anticipates 4,000 beers to be judged by more than 170 judges. Four new competition categories have been added:  Fruit Wheat Beer, Chocolate Beer, American Style Brett Ale and International Style Pale Ale.  Since 2001, the top category for entries has been the American-Style India Pale Ale.  Given our experience out and about and at the 2011 Montana Brewers Festival, it’s not a stretch to see why.  Winners will be announced on Saturday, Oct. 1 beginning at 1:00 p.m.

Here are the Montana Breweries attending the Festival: 

Big Sky Brewing Co.
Carter’s Brewing
Flathead Lake Brewing Co.
Great Northern Brewing Co.
Madison River Brewing Co.
Montana Brewing Co.
Red Lodge Ales
Yellowstone Valley Brewing Co.

Update:  The full list of beers came out from the Brewers Association this morning and I don’t see any from Yellowstone Valley on there, even though they’re still in the brewery list.  Not sure if that’s an error or if they did not end up making the trip.