We hope our 2024 GABF beer guide will help provide some direction as you happily roam the aisles. Be sure to send us your favorites on social media.

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The post Sip the Best: Our 8 Must-Try Beers at GABF 2024 first appeared on All About Beer.

This year, the festival will reduce the number of sessions from four to three, with the notoriously raucous Saturday session going away. The Brewers Association (BA) also redesigned the layout and experience of America’s most attended beer festival to better suit a new generation of drinkers. 

“We know the format, whether regional, alphabetical, or now by experience area, is always one of the festival’s most highly debated topics,” says Ann Obenchain, Vice President of Marketing and Communications for the Brewers Association, organizers of the Great American Beer Festival. 

After decades of organizing the event by region and other similar staid manners, the BA decided to radically shift its approach to the nation’s largest beer event. “To execute the new experience area idea, we had to abandon the traditional ordering from the past,” says Obenchain. “We hope that attendees will share our excitement in this new layout and discover new beverages and vendors.”

While many long-time Great American Beer Festival attendees and brewers may bristle at the changes, the festival was probably long overdue for some changes. Once a must-attend event whose tickets sold out shortly after going on-sale, recent years have seen emptier aisles and far fewer attendees. The festival’s regional approach revealed some of its challenges. Long dominated by Colorado and California breweries, other regions were less well-attended, with some, such as New England, so tiny as to barely cover any ground. 

The pandemic and demographic changes only exacerbated an existing identity crisis. Once among the most popular weekend activities for adults, beer festivals have experienced diminished attendance in the past decade. Festivals grew expensive and tired, with little innovation to meet changing demographics and the aging of their audiences. Many large festivals have opted not to return. For those events looking to continue, trotting out the same old business model was no longer optional. 

Great American Glow Up: GABF’s New Look

The Great American Beer Festival is ready to shed its rigid craft beer enthusiasm and usher in a new era of fun. According to the BA, the new GABF experience involves a series of “diverse and immersive experiences designed to transport you to different worlds, each offering a unique blend of themed decor, specialized brews, engaging activities, and vibrant entertainment.” Gone are the boring regional sections of the past, replaced by new sets of festival experiences, “a series of unforgettable journeys, each promising its own set of delights and discoveries,” according to the BA. 

Attendees at the 2024 festival will experience six distinct areas. They include “Prost!,” a German inspired biergarten featuring decor paying homage to Oktoberfest, live polka bands playing traditional Bavarian music, and a stein-holding contest. “Score!” is a sports-themed area that will host Lucha Libre Mexican Wrestling and Mechanical Bull Riding. “Fright” is a Halloween-themed area welcoming costumed festival attendees. “Blast Off” offers “liquid innovations and on-trend flavors from international and domestic breweries,” according to the BA. This includes the United Nations taproom, which hosts classic beers from around the globe. 

“The brewers self-selected their locations,” says Obenchain. “We’re looking forward to seeing how they engage with the new themes and the customers. We’ve already seen a few photos of props some brewers are bringing- it’s going to be fun!”

It’s easy to be skeptical or to decry these innovations as a desperate attempt to maintain relevance in a time of dwindling consumer interest and beer festival attendance. And you’d be correct. You could understandably expect the Prost! Experience to be a sanctuary for lager lovers, filled with pilsners, marzens, and festbiers. And while you’ll likely see folks decked out in lederhosen and dirndls, you can also drink a Key Lime Pie cream ale, a nearly-9% ABV blueberry waffle pastry stout, and a pina colada milkshake IPA in the section, and that’s only from the first brewery listed in the section. The celebration in the Prost! experience of all things German also comically includes the Lost Abbey and Russian River (maybe STS Pils qualifies).

But also, what do you expect? Should the BA and other festival sponsors simply pack up their taps and crack a Big Sipz Purple Punch wine cocktail. To the BA’s credit, it’s attempting to iterate, to push the bounds of beer festivals, to lean into catering to those seeking a fun night out. 

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. But standing still is no longer an option. Craft beer sales have stagnated if not retreated in recent years due to a wide variety of factors. It’s time to try something new.

The fest also continues opportunities for attendees to meaningfully interact with brewers. The Meet the Brewer experience area at the Great American Beer Festival offers an interactive space where fest goers talk with brewers from around the country, allowing them to “appreciate the artistry and passion that goes into every pint, offering a chance to learn, taste, and engage like never before,” according to the BA.

“The experience area idea was generated from feedback from brewers, attendees, and our event committee, as well as the desire to evolve to continuously meet the ever-changing customer preferences,” says Obenchain. “Events and festivals, in general, are becoming more experiential and providing multi-layer offerings to the wildly varied preferences of the now four distinct generational groups (legal drinking age Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers).”

Obenchain and the BA also acknowledge that the core group of craft beer fans continues to age and it’s incumbent on the association to evolve with the times. “Our largest purchaser group is between the ages of 21-34, and the vast majority of purchasers under 44,” says Obenchain. “We mindfully kept long-time attendees and beer fan favorites like Meet the Brewer, Heavy Medal, but also wanted to provide more entertainment options for the younger demographics who might be looking for other things to do, see, taste, and enjoy.”

See you in Denver

I’m excited to attend the festival this year, to reconnect with the American craft beer industry in its single largest and most influential event, and to see how the changes work out. It’s ok to remember that beer is supposed to be fun and this year’s fest seems geared towards reminding folks of that. 

“As always, we value attendee feedback and will be listening and learning for ways to evolve GABF for years to come,” says Obenchain.

The post Big Changes at Great American Beer Festival 2024: What Beer Lovers Need to Know first appeared on All About Beer.

Pixley was born and raised in Las Vegas, and he has been a part of the local craft beer scene and homebrew scene since 2010. Pixley is a certified BJCP judge and a credited contributor to the 2021 BJCP Guidelines. He’s been a member of the Milk The Funk Facebook group since 2014 and has written and maintained around 80 percent of the Milk The Funk Wiki, which is a free to access wiki that summarizes and documents scientifically and experientially based knowledge about sour beer brewing.and fermentation with “alternative” microbes.

“I am very excited for CBC to be hosted here, but I realize that Vegas is not known for craft beer,” he says. “Despite this perception, I think our town has made amazing leaps forward in the past decade or so, mostly driven by an off-strip local scene. The strip still has very little to offer as far as craft beer. If you get a chance to get away from the strip and explore the town, here is my locals guide.”

He notes that this list contains all of the breweries in town, but as far as bars that serve craft beer “I am leaving out a lot. These are what I believe to be the standouts worth visiting as far as craft beer bars go.”

Breweries in the Arts District

Able Baker

Cin-Cin Brewhouse and Seafood Bar

CraftHaus Tap Room

Hop Nuts

HUDL

Las Vegas Brewing Tap Room

Nevada Brew Works

Beer bars in the Arts District

Berlin Bar

Hola Habibi

Ser Veh Zah

Silver Stamp

Voodoo Brewing

Garagiste (notable wine bar; has natural wine too)

Breweries in the Henderson Booze District and Water Street

CraftHaus (brewery location)

Neon Desert Brewing Co.

Lovelady Brewing Co.

Mojave Brewing Co.

Not beer, but worth checking out in the area of Henderson Booze District and Water Street

Deadwood Meadery

Khoury’s Fine Wine and Spirits

Las Vegas Distillery

Vegas Valley Winery

Breweries on Fremont and Nearby

Beer Zombies/Tenaya Creek on Bonanza (take Uber from Fremont; Beer Zombies bars have several other locations all around town)

Mob Museum (I *think* they still make their own beer? Staple Vegas spot regardless)

Triple 7 (inside Main Street Casino)

Bars on Fremont and Nearby

Atomic Liquors

Eureka

Evil Pie

Fat Cat

Breweries in North Las Vegas and North and West Las Vegas:

Big Dogs Brewing (24/7 food and gaming)

North 5th Brewing

Las Vegas Brewing (walkable to Aces and Ales)

Chicago Brewing

Bars in North Las Vegas and North and West Las Vegas:

595 Craft Kitchen

Aces and Ales on Tenaya (OG location is on the east side of town on Nellis)

Bars Near the Strip, Airport, and UNLV

Hofbrauhaus

Player One

Pub 365 (inside Tuscany Casino)

Red Dwarf

Sand Dollar (China Town location)

Tacos and Beer

The post The Best Places to Drink Craft Beer in Las Vegas first appeared on All About Beer.

To help us capture the essence of San Diego’s beer scene, we are joined by Jenny Mann and Brandon Hernandez. 

Beer writer and marketer Brandon Hernández has been deeply plugged into southern California beer for more than a decade. He has helped direct marketing at some of the area’s best known breweries, including Stone, Alesmith, and Societe. In 2019, the long-time writer decided to focus his efforts on creating a new interactive resource for fans of the area’s beer scene with the founding of San Diego Beer News. 

The site is a bit of a throwback to the earlier days of beer blogs and local brewspapers. Instead of doing deep dives into broad, weighty topics of national import, Brandon focuses on providing detailed and tangible information about San Diego breweries and beer bars. SD Beer News offers brewery maps, tap lists, interviews with local brewers and beer players, and lots of local beer news. 

A native San Diegan, Brandon is one of the most informed sources you’re going to find about that beer scene. 

When you research San Diego beer, Jenny Mann is one of those names that keeps coming up. For more than a decade she has worked for and with some of the top breweries and craft beer bars in the city. She has bartended, led brewery tours, taught draft beer maintenance programs, and helped breweries navigate the confusing world of social media. She is also a professional photographer who has captured many of the city’s breweries through her lens. Jenny is a brewery coach and well-regarded speaker who often presents to local brewery guilds. She and her partner recently departed for the Pacific Northwest but she still considers San Diego home and she has a wealth of knowledge to share.

We’re excited to jump into an exploration of the history and present day bounty of the San Diego, California beer scene on this episode of Beer Travelers. 

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you download podcasts.

The post Exploring The San Diego Beer Scene first appeared on All About Beer.

And today we have two great local guests to guide us on our journey. Carla Jean Lauter is a freelance beer writer based just outside of Portland. She has written columns and articles for a number of publications and her current gig is with local Beer & Weed Magazine. Carla is smart, funny, and plugged into Portland and the Maine beer scene. She’s opinionated and engaging and when she talks, folks in the know listen. Joining Carla today is Benjamin Moore. A freelance writer and photographer in Maine, Ben is best known as the activebeergeek on Instagram. His photos are striking and he captures the spirit of the beer scene in the state through his lens. 

We discuss the unlikely success of Allagash Brewing, and its even more improbable move into producing delightful IPAs. And we cover the wide range of great breweries and styles produced in this picturesque New England town.

We’re excited to jump into an exploration of the history and present day treasures of the Portland, Maine Beer scene on this episode of Beer Travelers. 

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you download podcasts.

The post Exploring Beer in Portland, Maine, the Other Portland. first appeared on All About Beer.

In reality, Wisconsin is all of those things and so much more. I grew up 90 minutes south of Milwaukee but it might as well have been a totally different country. Chicago is Midwestern in the way that non-alcoholic beer is beer, in name only.  

Wisconsin, on the other hand, is pure Midwest. From Friday night fish frys to the homey environs of supper clubs and a relatively laid back sense of community and good spiritedness, Wisconsin is the heart of the Midwest for me.

So today I’m excited that in the latest episode of Beer Travelers we’re making our way to one of the great overlooked gems in the American craft beer scene: Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We can’t wait to explore the Milwaukee beer scene with you.

To help lead us through this town’s glorious and storied beer scene we have two fantastic local guides. Chris Drosner is a long-time beer writer and editor covering Wisconsin and Milwaukee specifically. He’s written the Beer Baron column for the Wisconsin State Journal, the daily newspaper in the capital city of Madison. And it’s through this column that I first got to know Chris and his take on the Madtown and greater Wisconsin beer scenes. More recently, Chris moved to Milwaukee, where he is now the executive editor of Milwaukee Magazine. 

Joining Chris to help us on our tour of Brew City this week is Bobby Tanzillo, the senior editor at OnMilwaukee.com, where he writes about beer, whiskey, history, and architecture. He’s the author of a half dozen history books, including several about beer and its history in Milwaukee. And he’s a great resource for all the beer happenings in the city.

While Chris and Bobby compete for scoops on the latest beer news in Milwaukee, it’s clear they have a deep respect for one another and they are the perfect pair to help us navigate this jewel on Lake Michigan.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you download podcasts.

The post Beer Travelers – Milwaukee Beer Scene Exploration. first appeared on All About Beer.

And in this episode, we explore not only the great local beer scene but the cast of characters who have put Portland firmly in the center of any discussion about the world’s greatest beer cities. And to do so, we’re joined today by perhaps the two best sources for the local beer scene.

Jeff Alworth is a long-time beer writer, author of several books, including The Beer Bible, and the co-host of the Beervana Podcast. He has taught courses about beer and the business of beer and has freelanced for a bunch of publications. He is also one of the last beer bloggers standing. Jeff frequently posts his thoughts on beer, culture, and business at his award-winning blog, Beervana. He is a passionate advocate for all things Portland beer and we’re lucky to have him this week to help guide us. 

Our second guest is Ezra Johnson-Greenough, who is the founder of The New School, which is a great webmagazine covering beer and cider in Oregon and Washington. New School is the kind of resource that every beer loving region would be lucky to have and as Jeff says, Ezra is the most plugged in source to the beer happenings in Portland you’ll find. A native Portlander, Ezra covers beer industry news, style trends, and does interviews and offers commentary, along with organizing festivals and events. 

My pick for a place to have a beer in Portland is not one of the great hype taprooms or historic breweries but instead a fun, quirky spot. You’ll hear us briefly discuss McMenamin’s on the show, one of the oldest brewers in the region. Founded by two brothers, McMenamins is a family owned chain of brewpubs, breweries, and other venues often housed in historic or revitalized spaces. My pick for Portland is one such place, the Kennedy School. Once a local elementary school, the school closed in the 1970s only to be later reborn and transformed into a hotel and brewery by the McMenamins. The place retains all the charm of the original school complete with detention halls which have been transformed into a bar. It’s a pretty unforgettable spot for a pint. 

No one episode could hope to capture all that Portland has to offer but that’s not our purpose on this show. We’re here to talk about the best of Portland’s beer scene. So let’s get our Portland visit started with special guests Jeff Alworth and Ezra Johnson-Greenough.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you download podcasts.

This Episode is Sponsored by:

Pub Culture Beercations

Stop living vicariously through other people’s social media posts and get out and make some memories of your own! Join Pub Culture Beercations for one of our upcoming tours and start exploring the world one pint at a time with us. Visit PubCultureBeercations.com for more information.

The post Beer Travelers: Portland, Oregon. America’s Best Lager City? first appeared on All About Beer.

Sean Nordquist is the executive Director of the Florida Brewers Guild, a role he has had since 2017. He is responsible for growing membership, coordinating events (including the excellent annual conference that I attended a few years back), as well as representing breweries and their interests before the state legislature in Tallahassee. Before taking on that role, he was a beer writer and also helped run Tampa Bay Beer Week.

Mark DeNote is a freelance beer writer and communicator who runs Florida Beer News, a site dedicated to the state’s emerging craft breweries, thriving breweries, and the craft beer history of Florida. Mark is also the author of two books about Florida craft beer, The Great Florida Craft Beer Guide and Tampa Bay Beer: A Heady History.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you download podcasts.

This Episode is Sponsored by:

Pub Culture Beercations

Stop living vicariously through other people’s social media posts and get out and make some memories of your own! Join Pub Culture Beercations for one of our upcoming tours and start exploring the world one pint at a time with us. Visit PubCultureBeercations.com for more information.

The post Beer Travelers: Tampa Bay with Sean Nordquist and Mark DeNote first appeared on All About Beer.

Brooklyn was once one of the world’s great brewing centers. Home to nearly 50 breweries in 1900, the borough brewed a ton of beer under brands names like Schaefer, Rheingold, and many others lost to history. But that came to an end by the mid-1970s and the borough’s mashtuns went silent for the next almost 20 years. That was until 1987 when Steve Hindy and Tom Potter decided to open up their own brewery in a warehouse district in Williamsburg. Named after the borough it inhabited, Brooklyn Brewery would go on to spread the word of craft beer around the globe and become one of the early pioneers of the resurgent modern American beer scene.

It took a while for brewing to catch on again in Brooklyn but slowly others opened, including Kelso and Sixpoint. And then there was the third wave of craft brewers, with names such as Other Half, Threes, and Finback. Today, Brooklyn’s beer scene is top notch and the borough’s bars and breweries make for an easy and exciting night out. 

After falling in love with it after my first visit, I trek down to Brooklyn a couple times a year including in December for an annual holiday themed pub and brewery crawl. It remains a favorite place to visit and drink and I look forward to exploring it with two great local experts.

Courtney Iseman is a freelance writer who has written engaging pieces for Vinepair, Craft Beer and Brewing, as well as her own newsletter, Hugging the Bar. She’s a compelling voice in beer and has written extensively about everything from diversity and inclusion to her favorite local Brooklyn pubs, including about the bar owned by our second guest.

Chris Maestro is a DJ, avid record collector, educator, and also the co-owner with his wife of Bierwax, a beer bar with outposts in both Brooklyn and Queens. The Prospect Heights based bar focuses on great beer and music, played analog style from one of Chris’s thousands of vinyl records that line the back of the bar. He was in the beer business before opening his own shop and is a Brooklyn native. 

It’s a big borough and there’s a lot of ground to cover in this episode. So let’s get started with our tour of Brooklyn, New York, with writer Courtney Iseman and publican Chris Maestro.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you download podcasts.

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This Episode is Sponsored by:

Pub Culture Beercations

Stop living vicariously through other people’s social media posts and get out and make some memories of your own! Join Pub Culture Beercations for one of our upcoming tours and start exploring the world one pint at a time with us. Visit PubCultureBeercations.com for more information.

The post Beer Travelers: Brooklyn with Courtney Iseman and Chris Maestro first appeared on All About Beer.

Even in more recent decades, the city’s beer and brewing scenes have been in great peril. Assisted in part by that adoration of beer geeks from around the globe, and of course their tourist dollars, Brussels is making a comeback. And today Eoghan Walsh walks us through the city’s vibrant and curious brewing history and updates on the status of things today and what is to come in its future. Eoghan runs Brussels Beer City, a great website you should visit, and he’s the author of a book of the same name as well as the more recently published A History of Brussels Beer in 50 Objects. For more on those endeavors, I recommend listening to the podcast that Eoghan and I recorded together back in January on Beer Edge. But today, we’re talking about Brussels and its beer scene and culture. It’s an incredibly informative conversation and it left me excited to return to Brussels and visit some of the spots Eoghan talks about.

We discuss Cantillon, Brasserie De La Senne, Le Source Brewing, and Mort Subite as well as many others during this podcast. Stay tuned at the end of the episode for one of my personal favorite suggestions for Brussels, another great place for a nightcap or to escape the crowds of the Grand Place and the tourist dens. 

In this episode of Beer Travelers, we discover Brussels, from its robust days of brewing to its more humble yet growing modern times, we try to capture all the city has to offer.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you download podcasts.

This Episode is Sponsored by:

Pub Culture Beercations

Stop living vicariously through other people’s social media posts and get out and make some memories of your own! Join Pub Culture Beercations for one of our upcoming tours and start exploring the world one pint at a time with us. Visit PubCultureBeercations.com for more information.

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The post Beer Travelers: Brussels with Eoghan Walsh first appeared on All About Beer.