Well it took me long enough to post about this, but here goes! The Great American Beer festival is now all wrapped up and I’ve got happy news to report. Iron Hill brought back medals for the 13th year in a row! Yeah! Tim Stumpf of our Phoenixville location pulled gold for his Schwarzbier (he came right out of the gates with a gold at his first GABF last year) and Bob “the medal machine” Barrar from Media added a Silver to his vast collection for his Raspberry Torte. That takes the Iron Hill total up to 30 medals company wide for GABF. Nice!

I judged this year. I always enjoy that, but i’ve got to tell you it really takes a toll. If you just work the event as a brewer you more or less have your day time hours to yourself. That’s key for one of the biggest beer ’sampling’ events of the year. When you judge, however, you’ve got to be up, fed, watered, and ready to evaluate beer by about 8:00 a.m. Oh, and you are expressly forbidden from being hug over. Judging sessions go on all day. You get about a half an hour to freshen up and then BAM! onto the festival floor you go until the public sessions are over at about 10pm. THEN everyone goes out…usually to the Falling Rock or some other local watering hole.  This goes on for 3 days….owwww, my body hurts. In any case,  the judge sessions this year were awesome. I always get a few ‘Dog’ categories since there is so much Iron Hill beer in the comp. (I judged Expiremental beer for like the one hundreth time). My wife judged too…and she got GREAT categories for the entire event. Man was I jealous of that. The Saturday ‘Member’s Only’ session is when the awards are announced. Mark brought plenty of MoJo and even had his ‘I can’t believe we didn’t win anything’ Nightmare the night before. Congrats to Tim and Bob. Nice work!

Other highlights: Becky Koval came out and brough ‘Rowdy Ali’. Jason ‘The Gooch’ Oliver from Devil’s Backbone brewing took 4 MEDALS his first year. He and the owner of his brewery just kept doing laps back to the stage.  By lap 3 his guy had a grin even death wouldn’t have wiped off of his face. Gooch rules! Scotty from C-Lawrence took gold in American Sour. Casey from Flying Fish killed with Exit 4…lots of our friends had a very, very good year.

Best hospitality of the week: Tom, Fergy, and Kurts Super Secret wine shin-dig. (nice break after a week of beer) Thanks for the invite guys. It’s always a pleasure to share an adjult bev in the style to which you have become accoustmed.