Big Beer Fest rocks Vail

The Colorado Beer Trail is in Vail for the 15th Annual Big Beer, Belgians and Barleywines Festival -- dubbed appropriately the Food and Wine Festival of beer -- and it does not disappoint. The tasting begins at 2:30 p.m. today, but Friday was packed with all sorts of seminars that included guided tastings of sour beers, a how-to on culturing yeast from your favorite beer so you can brew it yourself and an extensive workshop put on by Ray Daniels, Founder and Director of the Cicerone Program.


About 60 folks from National Beer Judges to plain beer aficionados judged the Big Beers homebrew competition and the winners of that will be announced later today. I judged Belgian beers and while there were more misses than hits in terms of style and technical quality, one of the dozen beers I sampled did stand out and was sent on to the semifinal round.


This festival is unique for several reasons. Festival Director and Founder Laura Lodge says that she intends to keep it relatively small and, to the extent that 1,600 attendees are able to be, intimate. Unlike other, larger beer festivals, you're going to see the owners and brewers behind the tables talking about the beers they're serving.


And most of the beers are unique and/or vintage offerings and not what you ever find at other festivals, let along at the tap rooms of the brewers. Dry Dock Brewing from Aurora has four, yes FOUR, whiskey barrel-aged beers that clock in at 8-9.3 percent ABV (alcohol by volume). The Double Hazelnut Brown, Double Brown, Double Coffee Porter and the Double Vanilla Porter. Front Range Brewing from Lafayette has a monster Silverheels Barleywine that's just over 12 percent ABV. Avery brought 11 of their notoriously sumo-sized beers, including Samael's, Rumpkin, Pump(KY)n and Tweak, a bourbon barrel-aged stout with coffee. And the list goes on.


Yes, Colorado is heavily represented here, but there are also some big names from across the pond, including two dozen breweries from Belgium and a handful from England, Germany and Switzerland. According to Lodge, it doesn't hurt that the festival is in Vail. It's a great excuse for skiers to combine work with play.


We'll be posting more from the Big Beer Fest, which is based in the posh Vail Cascade Resort and Spa. The festival is also a fundraiser for the Vail Valley Charitable Fund, which raises money for Eagle County residents and workers who have run into financial problems due to medical issues. So this event does a great service in helping out the locals.