GABF 2012 – Recaps of Day 1 With Pics

Danny Fullpint of The Full Pint brings you his unique perspective on day 1 of The 2012 Great American Beer Festival.

Pregame

While we’ve heard of the nonsense of “loading up” before the actual festival, we did have some time to kill, so we decided to check out Great Divide Brewing.  On the map, IT LOOKED SO CLOSE, and after walking forever, that first beer never tasted so good.  It’s a pretty decent sized brewery with a fairly small taproom.  There were others who had the same plan as us, but with that said, it was easy to get a few beers and get back to headquarters before the festival.

Thursday Night Festival

My immediate impression was this was far more crowded than last years, however many of my friends told me it wasn’t the case.  Because last year was so overwhelming for me, one thing I forgot to do was walk around and introduce myself to some of the brewers, especially those who have worked with us over the last five years. So for the first hour or two, we walked around sipping samples and saying hi, and it was nice.  The crowd wasn’t rowdy for beer fest standards, although I must be showing my age as I don’t understand the fun in howling for dropping a PLASTIC CUP.  There weren’t ridiculous lines for most popular brewers. Dogfish Head’s line stood out as the longest in my opinion.

I had many old favorite beers, but some of the standouts for me were Fatheads IPA, Allagash Coolship Resurgam, Cigar City Good Gourd and Goose Island’s Gingerbead Ale.

Post Game

We met up with some old friends at a very interesting gastro pub called Euclid Hall.  We missed out on going last year, and am very glad we checked it out.  The place has a well thought out menu and a sweet beer list. After Euclid Hall we headed over to Cheeky Monk to end a very long day.