What's It like at the GABF?

People ask “what’s it feel like to have your brewery’s name called in that huge GABF Hall when they are handing out awards for beers and breweries?”. Well it’s pretty exciting is all I can say!! First of all the Saturday they hand out awards is for the beer industry, family, and friends and everyone is in a very excited state. Seeing as this was the biggest GABF in its 30 year history (over 2,000 beers entered from more than 500 breweries) it was even more exciting. And we got there late so it was difficult to find 4 chairs together in the audience. We did it though (the distributor of the year got their award at the start and didn’t come back) and sat in anticipation until our beer categories rolled up. The first two categories we entered passed by without anything and I was beginning to get worried that our favorite beers were not going to be award winning. Then when they said “and the Gold goes to Chuckanut Helles Lager” I knew they recognized a beer the brew crew had been perfecting for years!  Then “the Silver goes to Chuckanut Dunkel Lager”, our beer that had won many a gold but somehow got passed over at last year’s festival. The exciting moment for me was when they said “the Gold goes to Chuckanut Kolsch” that’s when I nearly fell out of my seat! Will and the brew crew have been working on that beer since we opened in 2008. Will hadn’t been happy with the yeast and knew if he could just get the yeast he used in Istanbul it would be a medal winner. So this past year when we were in Germany (a trip we won for winning Small Brewpub of the Year) he got a slant of the Kolsch yeast he was using in Istanbul and brought it back to use here in the U.S. And sure enough Chuckanut Kolsch has been winning awards ever since(receiving both a Gold and a Silver at the NABA). Then when they announced the German Altbier  category we were thrilled to hear them announce at the start “the Bronze goes to Chuckanut Alt Bier”. It was the first time we entered Alt into a competition.

To win the special brewery categories one must have so many points from winning Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals with Gold receiving the most points. But to make this category more fair breweries must state which 8 beers they want counted toward the award. That way a large or wealthy brewery can enter as many beers as they want but only 8 of the beers can be counted towards this award. Small breweries like Chuckanut cannot afford to enter multiple categories so when we enter our 8 beers those are the beers we think have the best chance of being noticed and counted towards the brewery award category. This festival and competition is probably one of the most experienced and well done in the world for craft beer. All the tastings are blind, meaning no one tasting knows where the beer comes from. They get so many samples and first delete beers according to color guidelines for the style. Then they might delete according to the aroma, clarity or not, etc. They then get down to the tasting. There are guidelines as to how the beer should taste in each of the categories. The more difficult judging are probably the categories where the guidelines are vague and more open ended. Judges in those categories follow more of their own impression on how the style should taste. Chuckanut concentrates on working with beers that have stricter guidelines which for some breweries is more difficult. We tend to excel at brewing European beers that have been brewed to a specific style for hundreds of years. That’s the challenge we enjoy! So when they announced Small Brewing Company and Small Brewing Company Brewer of the Year 2011 goes to Chuckanut Brewery it was the icing on the cake to a thrilling Great American Beer Festival!