Well gang, It’s GABF season again! We are only seven very short weeks away from the fest and I’ve got to tell you that I always get excited about it. Wahooo!! For the uninitiated GABF stands for the Great American Beer Festival. The GABF is the largest beer festival and brewery competition in the United States.  Over 400 breweries will be coming together to pour over 1800 beers on October 9, 10, and 11 in Denver Colorado…and you thought the Democratic National Convention was the biggest thing happening in Denver this year! This is MUCH better. In addition to being a festival, the GABF is also a competition. Breweries enter beers to be judged by a blind panel of professional judges and awards are given based on quality and trueness to style. Iron Hill Brewery has quite a history with this comp as we have won awards every year for the last 11 years and in 2006 we were chosen Large Brewpub of the Year, and (knock on wood) we’re in the fight again this year! Part of the whole ‘Dance’ is deciding which categories to enter and which beers to send. Every year there is a tasting panel at our Headquarters where all of the brewers get together and conduct blind panel tastings of beers from each of the Iron Hill locations. This year I think we have to decide on about 80 beers..and that is chore, let me tell you. I’ll have photos and details about the panel next week. 

North Wales will be entering about 6 beers this year including our first ever Pro-am beer. the GABF is encouraging professional brewers to team up with award winning amatures to brewer commercial scale versions of award winning homebrew recipes. Our Am this year is Dave Grosch. Dave is a little fanatical about brewing…which is one of the reasons we like him…and he is also a member of our local homebrew club Keystone Hops. Dave won best of show at War of the Worts which is the homebrew comp we host here every year. We were very happy to scale up and brew his Munich Dunkel recipe which we’ve aptly named ‘Dave’s Dunkles’ and it is being entered in the GABF Pro-am category this year. Last year’s winners were the guys at Bethlehem Brew Works, so we’d LOVE to keep the winning here in PA. Fingers crossed!

I am also on the GABF Judge Panel…and no, they don’t let me judge beers we’ve entered! I’ve judged for the last 3 years and this year I am finally getting a break. Unfortunately that means I won’t be going to the fest this year BUT we are going to throw a GABF party here at Iron Hill North Wales. I am working on getting a live video feed from the floor of the event for the Saturday awards ceremony, but at the very least we’ll be listening in on the audio and cheering for our beers. This should be a great time. Dave, Doug and I just filled bottles for competition yesterday. Check out the photos all over this post of us in action. I have set aside some extra beer from our competition run and we’ll be drinking it and counting down the minutes until the awards ceremony. I’ve got to tell you that’s going to be a nail biter. It always is. I’ll post more details soon, but keep your calendar clear for the afternoon of Saturday, October 11th and come join us.

Last night was our Company Party and what a night it was! Every year IHB has an employee appreciation party where we draw winners for our annual Great American Beer Festival Trip. This year the event was a five course beer dinner hosted by our friend Garrett Oliver, brewmaster for Brookly Brewery and it was attended by over 350 Iron Hill employees.

Our group can get a bit rowdy, as you might imagine and there are usually tons of people having waaaaaay too much fun when we get together. Let’s just say that this party has a history of being an IHB career - ender.  

This year no one was fired!!! Yeah! The whole crew got dressed up and headed to the beautiful Drexelbrook Catering and Banquet Facility for annual awards, a great talk by Garrett and tons of food and beer.

Just a quick shout out to the Drexelbrook staff, that place was awesome! We are a very big group with lots of needs and they pulled off a 5 course beer dinner with no hitches. That is a feat for sure, let me tell you. 

Anyway, here at the Hill we love food and beer pairings for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that we love food and beer! Garrett reminded us why and reminded our whole crew to respect our customers and give them the best, most creative offerings we have available. Great words from a man who we enjoy spending time with, Garrett is THE ‘Food with Beer’ guy and it was a great honor to have him come down and celebrate with us.

As we were being fed, anniversary awards were made. Turns out that both Doug and I are ‘Over the Hill’ as we’ve been here for more than four years! Man, do I love this company. Anyway, we each get cool IHB Over the Hill shirts and I think I even get a deck chair with the logo this year. 10 years get a kegerator. I can’t wait for that ’cause mine’s getting a little old and ratty.

During dinner the GABF drawing took place. Every year we give an hourly employee from each location a free trip to Denver to attend Great American Beer Festival. We’ve won an award at the GABF every year for the last eleven straight and it’s always great to hear our crowd cheer when they call our name. Plus this is the biggest beer festival in the United States and it’s just plain fun. Winners are picked by lotto and the longer you work for IHB the more tickets you get. Congrats Steve, this should be big fun in the Mile High City!

When we finished screaming and yelling for Steve, the People’s Choice awards were announced. North Wales won all three categories in an unprecedented sweep: Brewery of the year, Kitchen of the year, and Service Staff of the year! I am stoked and very proud of the crew here. Keep up the good work gang!  GO NW!

In case you were interested we were chosen ‘Best Microbrewery in Montgomery County’ and ‘Best Club in North Wales’, although I’m not sure there are ANY clubs in North Wales?!?

Here are Doug and Garrett after the North Wales crew swept all three customer categories. Our guests elected NW Brewery of the year, Kitchen of the year, and service staff of the year. Winning all three categories has nevery happened before and we are very proud. Thanks gang. 

 Here are a few more pics of the event for your enjoyment! 

Jesse Gilbert of IHB West Chester got the money seat just to the left of Garrett. I think he enjoyed the evening…what do you think. Sharp dressers both.  

I am happy to announce that we have a really cool event coming up here at IHB North Wales. On Thursday September the 4th we are going to be hosting a Beer and Food tasting event.

Every time I go to a full tilt beer dinner I end up needing a strecher just to drag my full belly to the car! I was talking about this problem with our Chef the other day and he had a great suggestion. He said, “Why don’t we do small plates instead? We could server more beers.” I love this guy! 

Here’s what we have come up with:

The Tasting will start at 7:00pm and will be five courses. Each course will be a small tappas style plate paired with about 6 ounces of our beer.

Smaller plates = smaller price too. Tickets will be $35 and we will be limiting seating to about twenty guests for this event.

Call early to get a space: 267-708-2000. The menu is below and please feel free to email me with your questions.

Yes, we are still doing our Big Fat Beer Dinner Blowout in November.

cheers!

Cucumber Ribbons on a Roasted Red Pepper Croûte

With a Black Pepper ranch drizzle

Witbier

Crisp Micro-Green Salad

Topped with fresh berries, Candied Walnuts

And Smoked Duck 

Abbey Dubbel

Pan Seared Diver Scallop

Fall Vegetable Hash, Dried Fruit Chutney,

Drizzled in Brown Butter

Old Ale 07

Grilled Filet Medallion

Exotic Mushroom Relish,

Smoked Tomato-Demi Glace

Pig Iron Porter

Lemon Lime Raspberry Sorbet

I just got back for Hawai’i and the World Brewing Congress. OH, and my WEDDING!!!!

Work first, The World Brewing Congress is a meeting every four years of 5 professional brewing associations including the Master Brewers Association of the Americas, the European Brewing Convention, the American Society of Brewing Chemists, and a couple of Pan-Asian scientific societies for beer. These groups meet every four years to discuss new research related to beer, industry trends, new process and products, market trends, etc. For 4 days there were talks, round-table discussions, poster presentations and casual conversations with brewing scientists, brewers, allied trade members and consumer groups about all things beer.

Now I know that sounds like a ton of Beer-dorkery…and it is but I AM a beer nut and this event is the Superbowl of beer nerdery. Just to give you an example, there were a series of yeast discussions given by some of the most famous people in beer science: Dr. Greg Casey of Miller Coors, Dr. Dirk Bandiak of Molson, Dr. David Ryder of Miller Coors just to name a few. let’s just say that if a bomb went off in the room beer micro-biology would be set back 50 years.

In any case I picked up some great info that will help us make better beer in a more efficient manner and that is always a good thing. After long days of flexing the brain pan we spent evenings socializing (drinking beer) in all kinds of beautiful places. There were a couple of dinner cruises, a luau on the beach complete with hula dancers, poi, etc. They buried a pig in the sand and everything!

We spent a bunch of time meeting new friends from Japan and China. Six billion beer drinkers are starting to pay attention to craft beer, at least a little. We also had the opportunity to hang out with some Mid-Atlantic brewers we enjoy greatly. 

Here’s a great pic of Bryan from Dogfishead Craft Brewery and his wife Ali on one of the dinner cruises. Andy Teverkm was along with his better half too. We had dinner with Brandon Greenwood of High Falls, and Bob Kleintop of the Lion Brewery was there with his family. I’m sure I’m forgetting someone, but you get the idea. Let’s just say that Hawai’i doesen’t suck and i couldn’t think of a better place to have a beer conference.

The day after the conference, Thursday August 7th 2008 I was married to Whitney Damarius Thompson on the beach in Oahu. It was beautiful and romantic, and she is awesome!

For those of you who don’t know, Whitney is also a brewer with Troegs in Harrisburg and i couldn’t be happier.

It was her idea to get hitched’ after the brewing congress and she was right on. Post nuptuals we snorkeled, and generally enjoyed the island flow. I couldn’t have imagined a better place or way to get married.  Here is a photo of my bride, drink in hand. Aloha, indeed.

Oh, and I thought you’d all get a kick out of this photo. My wife and I went surfing. How cool is that!