Best Birthday Ever!

Last weekend I went on an excellent trip with my wife to Denver Colorado. We had planned the trip for a while as it was my thirtieth birthday and I wanted to do something special/memorable for it. My awesome wife Jill found out that they were having the Great American Beer Fest on the weekend of my birthday and set it all up. I’m lucky that she planned it out early as the festival sold out this year as I hear it usually does.

We flew in on Thursday the 16th in the evening. I had a MGD on the plane and had forgotten that it is actually ok beer. Jill told me that we had a shuttle waiting for us to go to the hotel but we had to hurry because it was about to leave and we would have to wait for the next one. I was taking my time getting there because I didn’t mind waiting for the next shuttle when we got outside and I see a truck that looks a lot like my friend Mike’s. It was Mike! I guess Jill had called Mike and coordinated with him to meet us in Denver and hang out for the weekend as he was coming back to Michigan from Washington state where he works as a mountain guide. Mike was in the process of getting a parking ticket from the police when we walked up to the truck as he had stopped in the traffic lane and the police were not happy.

We ended up going to our hotel, Hotel Teatro, in downtown Denver and dropped our stuff off before we went out for the night. We decided to go out to a bar to get a drink and hang out when we came across a brew pub that was having a party. We walked up to the gate and received a sweet 6oz glass beer cup along with some poker chips for some unknown reason to us. Well, later we find out that this was an invite only party for brewers and their staff from the Beer Fest! It was completely awesome that we ended up getting free craft beer and food all night. I met a bunch of really cool brewers from different breweries around the country too. They had a raffle for things like $100 of yeast and malt but sadly we did not win any of the prizes. That’s what the poker chips were for. We ended up shutting the place down at 2am their time which ended up being 4am Michigan time. Super past my bed-time. : )

Friday turned out to be even better. I woke-up with a mild hangover and proceeded to eat some awesome vittles at Sam’s No. 3 in Denver. Their breakfast burritos are perfect for curing a hangover and they are tasty too. After some Motrin and a Vitamin Water I was ready to go to a Sensory Analysis Training course that was put on by the Seibel Institute. It was a lot of fun as I learned about a whole assortment of ways that beer can be affected by the brewing process, fermentation process and its life in the package. The speaker worked for several years in breweries in South Africa and was a professional analyst. She really knew her stuff! I am so happy that Jill got me tickets!! I spent about 4 hours tasting Budweiser and Budweiser that had been altered to give different faults before the ‘final exam’. I ended up getting one of the five samples correct but before you judge, it is a lot harder to judge beer quality when you are looking for faults. Trust me on that. : ) We spend the rest of the day going to breweries and playing some pool at one of the local bars before heading in for an early night around 10pm as we had a big day planned for Saturday.

Early the next morning, we met up with Mike and he took us to a state park sized city park in Boulder where we hiked up a mountain and did a little climbing too. It was my first time on real rock and I had the crap scared out of me. It was crazy high up!

We went to downtown Boulder to look for a “Tex Mex” restaurant that ended up being another surprise, my friend Jerome who I had not seen in years! Jill told me that Mike set up that surprise visit and it was great. We got some lunch in a local farmer’s market and said audios to Jerome so we could head back to Denver. After being on the freeway for too long I realized that something else was up and asked where we were going. I was told that we were going to a brewery in the airport. I had a feeling that we may be picking up someone and was correct when another of my friends Jamie flew in! Super awesome! We picked up Jamie and headed back to the hotel to get a last minute ticket for Jamie off of Twitter, the best service ever, and headed off to the Beer Fest just in time to get to the 10 mile long line. Exaggerated but close to reality. They let people in the door at 5:30 and we did not get in until about 6pm but the wait was worth it.

The festival was crazy.  There were hundreds of breweries on site and way more beers.  I gave it my best attempt to try them all but did not quite make it to the end.  There was a Sam Adams beer that was 28% and tasted like brandy.  It was supposidly $350 per 40 ounce bottle and only brewed once a year.  I got two samples of that!  I also signed up for a new beer magazine called Beer Conisour.  It seemed like a good magazine at the time, though I had been drinking.  Ill read through and tell you how it is.  Anyway, thanks to my wonderful wife, it was the best birthday ever!!

Cheers!