Last year's GABF haul - a lot of beer to drink

This week the MyBeerPix crew will be fanning out to two of the world’s great beer festivals and sharing what goes on with you.

Molly, Adam and I are heading out to the Great American Beer Festival this morning (Wednesday, Sept. 23) and will using our vast craft brewing influence to muscle our way into places and get you all the best reports from the show floor, many of the events, and occasionally the street (it happens).

You can follow us on Twitter (@mybeerpix, @beermolly, @heatmizer and @bluntsage), or by subscribing to our RSS feed right here. We’ll also be hitting a couple of GABF Tweetups, so make sure to say hi if you see us. #GABF, #GABFTweetup

Half a world away, Matt Dolman will be plundering Lower Saxony and hitting the original beerfest, Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany.

Beyond simply wearing dirndls and soaking up the suds, our intrepid foreign correspondent will be taking a bicycle tour of Germany for several days (conveniently beginning and ending at Oktoberfest). He’s on the tour with our good friend Ivan Derezin, owner of Churchill’s Pub and Grill.

Word is Matt’s phone doesn’t work in the EU, but you’ll be able to follow all his adventures right here. (hint: subscribe to the RSS feed.) #oktoberfest

Looking forward to the adventure! Hope you follow along, because it’s about to start in 2 hours or so!

Stone Sour Fest 2009

As temps in the shade gardens soared well into the high 90′s (upper 30′s Celsius), and into the 100′s on the (stone) patio — making it hot enough to melt the enviro-friendly water cups — the krieks, geuzes, and funks flowed in quantities large enough to cool anyone.

In many ways the fest looked like an outdoor version of the GABF with lines for Lost Abbey and Russian River brews (cleverly place under the same tent) wrapping out of the gardens and onto the upper patio, while plenty of interesting beers went relatively unnoticed at other stations. Personally I skipped the LA & RR stuff (been there, done that… though if you don’t do whatever you can to try LA’s Duck Duck Gooze, consider your life unfulfilled…) and focused on the things I’d never tried.

Among my favorite surprises: New Belgium’s Transatlantique Kriek and Valley Brewing’s DysFunktion Ale. (Actually got a chance to meet Valley’s Steve Altimari, who is pretty cool. Next time I’m in Stockton, CA, I’m dropping in to say hi.)

There were plenty of other tasty brews as well. Unfortunately, I have to admit that between the heat and the beer I didn’t take very good notes. And what notes I did take I lost. But it’s not like this is a beer review site anyway, so whatever.

Here’s a photo gallery of the folks that were there (read: lots of great people plus The Usual Suspects). Had a great time — other than Beer Molly getting heat stroke — if you were there, I hope you did too.

Enjoy the pics!

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The morning of day two requires a fairly heavy meal to offset the previous night. After breakfast we’ll blog a quick recap of yesterday then move on to stir up more trouble

Naturally, it was a huge beer list. This list is only one side of the bottle list. There was also a draft list and another list of “special” Belgians.

(Click on the image to see a full-sized, readable list)

This photo is just one corner of the bottle line-up. The full line was at least four times longer.

Here’s just a few of the beers on tap

That’s multi-award-winning home brewer, musician and man for all seasons, Julian Shrago looking cool after half a day of pouring excellent Belgians. (If you haven’t heard of this guy yet, you will soon — pretty much anything he brews is amazing and he’s working on opening his own brewery.)

You know those little plastic taster glasses you get at beer festivals? Yeah, well not here. All attendees got a nice Chimay glass. (Goofy look was optional, but frequently seen by the end of the evening.)

Two of the three party sponsors — Tomme Arthur (left) and Tom Nichol — taking a break seven hours into the party. You can’t see it from this angle, but in addition to his monk’s garb, Tom’s also sporting a nice tonsure. Tom’s a baseball fan, so I’m pretty sure he was channeling the San Diego Padres Friar. (Look for him on the JumboTron at the next Padres’ game.)

Sure, you’ve seen Duvel in those cute little bottles, but this is San Diego, home of Big Beer. Here, even the Belgian stuff comes in big bottles. Oh… and the opened a big bottle, Duvel, Chimay, and more (sometimes as big a 6 liters) every hour on the hour.

Former Stone Brewing meister and now brewing consultant to the stars, Lee Chase, got a new yellow hat for the party. (No word as to whether he also go a chimpanzee named George.)

Forget your regular beer festival food, how about fresh plates of steamed mussels to go along with your beer? (Outstanding, btw!)

Here’s Noah (left), head brewer at Pizza Port San Clemente (Beer Molly thinks he’s cute), Sean and PP Bottle Shop Manager Brad hanging out having a good time back by “the good stuff”.

Yup. Pretty much a Belgian beer lover’s playground.

One of the best surprises of the night was Port Brewing/Lost Abbey’s “12 Hour”, a blend of four barrel-aged beers created by the dopey looking guy on the right. That’s Sebastian “Bo” Winegarner, brewer over at Port Brewing/Lost Abbey, and he’s not as goofy as he looks in the photo. (He also makes really good beer.)

Belgian beer party ticket: $45; Shaggy haircut: $6; Hand knit Charlie Brown sweater to wear to the party: priceless.

To check out the all the photos from the party (and post your own comments), click on the photo below:

belgian-beer-party-08

Or you can just watch the slideshow from here: