Great American Beer Festival

What has 24,000 legs, a creamy head and appears only once a year? The Great American Beer Festival, of course. This year's event, held earlier this month at the Denver Merchandise Mart, was the largest in the festival's history. From a modest beginning in 1983 with 24 breweries participating with 45 beers, this year's showcase of American brewing talent boasted 710 beers from 168 breweries. And about 12,000 members of the enlightened beer-drinking public were in attendance to cheer the renaissance of one of America's oldest industries.

He's not in search of the Swedish bikini team or the mountain man mystique or any of the other fantasies that populate beer commercials. For Lou Farrell, the beer itself is the thing - the smell, the texture, the taste. And, in the world of brewing, Farrell is considered an expert. Later this week, he'll put his palate to the test as one of 43 judges at the 12th annual Great American Beer Festival in Denver. Farrell and his colleagues will sample 953 beers from 267 breweries across the United States.

EVEN IF you could taste and swallow a one-ounce sampler every minute, it would take a day and a half of nonstop sipping to try every one of the more than 2,000 beers poured at September's annual Great American Beer Festival in Denver. Not that I didn't try. My brain is numb and my notebook is a beer-splashed mess of smeared ink, but here are some random observations from the world's largest beer competition. If you want to win a medal at the Great American Beer Festival, try gaming the judging.

Meet the esteemed judges for our third annual Inquirer Brew-vitational local beer competition: Jan Matysiak , our special guest out-of-town brewer, has been the brewmaster at Sixpoint Craft Ales in Brooklyn since late 2011. Before that, Matysiak studied brewing science at University of Munich-Weihenstephan, worked for several German breweries, and was most recently managing the brewing operations at Live Oak Brewing Co. in Austin, Texas.   Tom Peters , co-owner of Monk's Cafe and the Belgian Cafe, is one of the nation's leading experts on Belgian beer.

Rye is becoming just as popular at the bar as it is in the bakery, judging from the grain's resurgent presence in whiskeys, and, increasingly, in beer. It adds a spicy, herbal edge to the usual barley malt in some of my favorite rye brews, including the lush and hoppy Red's Rye from Founders in Michigan, and the roasty brown Rye Beer from Phoenixville's Iron Hill, which recently took a "Roggenbier" gold at the Great American Beer Festival. (It will be on tap there again this winter)

Beer experts - among them the author of the new book Uncorking the Past - will bring ancient ales to life Thursday at the Penn Museum, with a lively discussion accompanied by ample quaffing. "If people want to taste the oldest chemically attested alcoholic beverage in the world, 'Chateau Jiahu' from 7000 B.C. China, this may well be one of their few chances," said Patrick McGovern, biomolecular archaeologist at the museum and a leading authority on ancient fermented beverages. He will be joined by Sam Calagione, founder and president of Dogfish Head Brewery in Rehoboth Beach, Del., maker of Chateau Jiahu, which won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival last week in Denver.

Researchers at Men's Health magazine have published a report that ranks Denver as the drunkest big city in America. Denver topped even the most notoriously decadent cities, the survey said, including New Orleans, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York. The ranking surprised even the researchers. "Who knows?" the article reads. "Maybe the thin air makes everyone thickheaded about designating drivers and limiting libations. " Though the article takes a lighthearted look at the rankings, the editors based the list on some sobering statistics: Denver ranked worst among 101 big cities for the number of drunken-driving arrests, alcohol-related driving deaths and deaths due to six alcohol-related liver diseases.

Mmmmmm . . . beer! - Homer Simpson, beer connoisseur "And the gold goes to Pabst N/A. " N/A? What in the name of Homer Simpson is going on when America's foremost beer festival awards a medal to a non-alcoholic beer? Some desperate beer fans must enjoy the stuff, but let's face it: "Mmmmmm . . . Amber O'Doul's Malt Beverage" rolls off the tongue like a sour belch. Non-alcoholic brew and a host of other unusual beer styles populated the Great American Beer Festival which concluded yesterday.

Like the Boston firebrands of old, Jim Koch has rebelled against foreign domination. But whereas his colonial predecessors dumped British tea in Boston Harbor, Koch, a former Harvard scholar, is trying to deep-six European beer. Eighteen months ago, Koch created a brew, fittingly called Samuel Adams Boston Lager, that he claims is superior to Heineken, Beck's and St. Pauli Girl - the leading European imports. From its home base in Boston, the Pittsburgh-brewed Samuel Adams has spread throughout New England, to Washington and now to the Philadelphia area, where it began appearing in bars and stores last week.

Meet the esteemed judges for our third annual Inquirer Brew-vitational local beer competition: Jan Matysiak , our special guest out-of-town brewer, has been the brewmaster at Sixpoint Craft Ales in Brooklyn since late 2011. Before that, Matysiak studied brewing science at University of Munich-Weihenstephan, worked for several German breweries, and was most recently managing the brewing operations at Live Oak Brewing Co. in Austin, Texas.   Tom Peters , co-owner of Monk's Cafe and the Belgian Cafe, is one of the nation's leading experts on Belgian beer.

George Hummel's life-changing moment came while traveling in his youth, when he tasted something quite literally unforgettable. "There were these weird things in California called microbreweries," says Hummel. "The beer was really different. I couldn't get anything like that back here, so I started making my own. " Fast forward to this fall, when Hummel celebrated the 25th anniversary of Home Sweet Homebrew, a supply shop off Rittenhouse Square that he owns with wife Nancy Rigberg.

BLACK IPAs are so 2011. Last year's hot new style, which exploded in popularity before beer gurus could even settle on a proper name (Cascadian Dark Ale? American Black Ale?), is already getting shoved to the side by a new crop of India pale ales. Would you believe white IPA? OK, you saw that one coming - so, how about Baltic IPA? Those are two of the new styles that found their way into my fridge before I even turned the first calendar page of 2012. And I won't be surprised if there are more newfangled IPAs to come.

GOURD HELP US, it's pumpkin-beer season again. That means brewers aren't just raiding the spice cabinet, they're reaching for their Roget's Thesaurus , too. No other beer style inspires more puns than the Great Pumpkin. Pumking , River Horse Hipp-O-Lantern , JackAle Lantern , Gourd of the Rings , Mashing Pumpkin , Pumpkin Up the Volume - well, you get the idea. "Coming up with the names is half of the fun," said Dick Cantwell, co-owner and brew master of Seattle's Elysian Brewing.

THE SHORT POUR Film Fest, to be held this weekend at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, owes a big debt to the inventors of Steadicam. Despite imbibing ample, sudsy portions of their feature subject, dozens of film directors somehow managed to keep their cameras focused long enough to produce a watchable body of work. The festival, the first devoted to short films about beer, includes more than two hours of original live action, animation, music videos and commercials. "It's really opened my eyes to how much media coverage and attention there is on beer, even way beyond what we see in TV commercials," said the festival's producer, Jeff Moses.

THIS TIME OF the year, everybody does a Top 10 List. But I consume beer by the sixpack, so that's what you're getting today: The 6 Beers That Defined the Decade. These aren't necessarily my favorites. (Heck, I can't even pick my favorite from last night.) But they are beers that set the pace in the American beer scene in the '00s. _ Stone Ruination (2002) Though not the first imperial (or double) India pale ale to be bottled, its in-your-face attitude defined the rule-breaking innovation of American craft beer in the '00s.

WHAT'S OLD is brew again. From heather to pomegranate, unusual ingredients that were common in beer 1,000 years ago are making their way back into the modern brew kettle, thanks to a quirky new wave of experimentation by small brewers. Through academic research and consultation of dusty texts, these brewers are producing a stunning variety of unusually flavored ales that were - until recently - virtually extinct. The oddest, undoubtedly, is Dogfish Head Chicha , brewed this summer with purple maize that founder Sam Calagione and his staff chewed into mush, spit out and dried.

Beer experts - among them the author of the new book Uncorking the Past - will bring ancient ales to life Thursday at the Penn Museum, with a lively discussion accompanied by ample quaffing. "If people want to taste the oldest chemically attested alcoholic beverage in the world, 'Chateau Jiahu' from 7000 B.C. China, this may well be one of their few chances," said Patrick McGovern, biomolecular archaeologist at the museum and a leading authority on ancient fermented beverages. He will be joined by Sam Calagione, founder and president of Dogfish Head Brewery in Rehoboth Beach, Del., maker of Chateau Jiahu, which won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival last week in Denver.

EVEN IF you could taste and swallow a one-ounce sampler every minute, it would take a day and a half of nonstop sipping to try every one of the more than 2,000 beers poured at September's annual Great American Beer Festival in Denver. Not that I didn't try. My brain is numb and my notebook is a beer-splashed mess of smeared ink, but here are some random observations from the world's largest beer competition. If you want to win a medal at the Great American Beer Festival, try gaming the judging.

WHEN TAP lineups at your local pub change every day, challenging taste buds and pushing flavors to the extreme, it's not hard to feel less than excited by the old standbys. Or worse. It's an unfortunate truth, after all, that familiarity breeds contempt. So the other day, I sat down with three stalwarts of the craft-beer renaissance with a clean palate and a fresh eye. Are they as outstanding as they were a generation ago when they were trendsetters? Or have they lost a step as competitors have improved?