Franconian Beer Message Board

German-style beer at GABF

Posted by JohnA on 2002-10-11 11:14:23

Well I did not sample too many German-style beers at the Great American Beer Festival last week. I was often distracted by barleywine, imperial stout, and the crazy good strong beers from Dogfish Head. I will say that the Dusseldorf-alt-style beers do not quite live up to the real thing. But there were some very good hefeweizen beers. One that did not win was from Island brewery somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Sticke Warrior member Andreas and his group of Germans said it was the best beer there and better than many German hefeweizens. The Berlin-style weiss beers I tasted were not that great, and seemed to be made with the addition of lactic acid rather than a souring bug(s). There was only one smoked beer category, with 12 entries. All were good; only the gold medal winner (BJ's Portland) was in the German tradition. The other winners were very good smoked porters, one of them from my local brewpub Redfish, the other the famous Alaskan S.P. 14 rye beers, but none that I tasted were roggenbier with weizen yeast, they used American ale yeasts. The Sandlot Brewery at Coors Field is a brewpub in the baseball stadium in Denver, owned by Coors but the brewer has room to make things that don't taste like the big brewery does. Still, he makes alot of pilseners, and won some medals this year. They are bigger, meatier, unfiltered pilseners made in typical brewpub cylindroconical system. Full winners list is at: http://beertown.org/GABF/02winners.htm

German-style beer at GABF by Fred Waltman on 2002-10-11 17:48:13

German-style beer at GABF by JohnA on 2002-10-14 09:36:52