By far, the best beer fest I’ve been to, obviously, since this the biggest in the country. I finally had the chance to taste so many different beers that I don’t have access to in Nevada. In future posts I’ll write about some specific breweries or beers I tasted.
Downside of visiting the final day, a lot of the more rare beers were already out. However I do have a list of favorites that I did get to try:
Stone BELGO Old Guardian Barley Wine
Rogue Old Crustacean Barley Wine
Dogfish Head Tweason’ale
Ballast Point Victory at Sea
Left Hand Milk Stout
Great Divide Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti and Espresso Oak Aged Yeti
Alaskan Smoke Porter aged since 2000

And the list goes on. Attached are a few pictures I was able to take. Yes I took a picture in front of the Anheuser Busch booth for fun, no I didn’t try anything there. I was surprised to see how busy the booth was, which is a shame considering all the great craft breweries that were there in attendance.
Got to meet Zane Lamprey from the TV shows Three Sheets and Drinking Made Easy, super nice guy. Also saw Greg Koch from Stone, he insisted that a picture be taken with him.
All in all, it was a great time. I highly recommend you take a trip to Denver for future GABF’s. It is impossible to not have fun.

ALC/VOL: 7ish%? The bottle has the gravity listed in Plato and I don’t feel like doing to the math to convert it into alcohol by volume.

Color: Dark amber brown.

Smell: For lack of a better term, it smells like every other brown ale. Just a bit nuttier.

Feel: A bit more carbonation than most brown ales.

Taste:  It tastes a bit nutty!

Strong hazelnut taste. Do not drink too cold or the hazelnut flavor will be a bit hidden. It has a very basic brown ale base to it but the hazelnut extract makes this a very unique tasting beer.

Overall: Very unique, great tasting beer. I have yet to taste a bad beer from Rogue. That being said, this beer has a very distinct taste and as such, it might be a bit much to have more than one.

Lastly, I don’t think I have ever been disappointed by the artwork on Rogue’s labels.

Thumbs up.