Was the Great American Beer Festival really "great" this year?

Read time approx. 4 min.

Just Tapped

A lot of stuff to talk about. A lot of catching up. Let’s get straight to it.

The Pretty Good American Beer Festival

There were about 40,000 festivalgoers at this year's Great American Beer Festival, which took place a couple of weeks ago in Denver. While 40K is still a pretty good number, it's not quite as bonkers as the pre-pandemic attendance figures, which were closer to 60K. In 2022 festival organizers attributed the smaller crowds to construction at the Convention Center. No excuses this year, just fewer people, but still pretty good.

Participation was also down in other ways compared to a few years ago. Brewery participation was down by about 30 percent to just 500 breweries. Just 500 breweries? Yeah, that’s still pretty good. Joking aside, GABF remains an impressive and immense event.

Of the 500 booths at the Great American Beer Festival, over 90 of them were occupied by Colorado breweries. One out of five were from Colorado, the remainder were from somewhere else in America. That’s pretty good, too. The abundance of local breweries is understandable given the current environment: it is not cheap for a brewery to participate in a beer festival, especially when it is more than 1,000 miles away.

The current edition of The New Brewer, the official mag of the Brewers Association, features an in-depth story about how and why beer festivals are struggling these days. To be fair, some people say that reports about the struggles are exaggerated, but there's no denying that the landscape has shifted beneath festival organizers' feet. Understanding the challenges facing festivals is valuable in that it helps us understand what’s happening in the minds and souls of craft beer consumers in general. You can see the current issue of The New Brewer here. 

Eastward Ho!

Here’s a story about the value of picking a lane and staying in it. At this year's Great American Beer Festival, Seattle-based Ghostfish Brewing —the nation’s most decorated gluten-free brewery—brought home two of the three medals in the gluten-free beer category (pictured below). It's not the first time this entirely gluten-free brewery hit a two-bagger at the GABF: the company did it in 2015 as a GABF rookie. Today, Ghostfish Brewing is the nation’s largest producer of GF beer and currently distributes its beers to 19 states. To meet growing demand, Ghostfish just opened a new brewery on the other side of the country.

In the spring of 2022, the company announced a plan to expand its operations to the other side of the nation where its beers were gaining favor in places like New York and Massachusetts. Transporting beer from Seattle to Boston is logistically challenging for a brewery the size of Ghostfish Brewing, so opening a second brewery made sense. Because its beers must be brewed at an entirely gluten-free facility, contract brewing wasn’t an option.

The new Ghostfish Brewing production facility and distribution center is in the town of Westfield in Upstate New York, about 30 miles west of Buffalo. There is no taproom or pub at the brewery. The paint is still drying at the new facility, but the brewery has already produced and sold over 2,000 cases of its gluten-free beers. The new brewery will initially have the capacity to produce 3,500 barrels per year. The company says, "Plans for opening a few retail locations throughout New York state are on the horizon."

October 10th - National Black Brewers Day

California is the first state in the country to officially declare that October 10th is Black Brewers Day. Establishing that date as Black Brewers Day was one of the National Black Brewers Association’s main priorities this year. As we reported back in May, the newly formed nonprofit made its public debut at this year's Craft Brewers Conference. Along with the declaration in California, the NB2A says that some municipalities are on the cusp of following suit: Sacramento, CA; New Orleans, LA; Toledo, OH; and Las Vegas, NV. You can read the California declaration (with all of the "whereas and therefore") here.

September’s Craft Beer BPI 😐

The National Beer Wholesalers Association recently released the Beer Purchasers Index for September. While some segments show continuing improvement, craft beer is not one of them. Shoulders back, chin up, press on. (What is the BPI? Learn here.)

Around the Web

• Guinness recently opened its new brewery and taproom in Chicago. A brewery, a taproom, a restaurant, and all sorts of other opportunities for consumers to spend money. 🤑 Read about it here.

• Molson Coors will pay Stone. It is now written in stone, so to speak. Molson Coors is really and truly going to pay Stone Brewing $56 million to settle a trademark dispute. $56 million! 😵 Read about it here.

Say What?

In response to last week’s reader poll about beer vacationing...

• 76 percent of you said: "Availability of good beer, visiting breweries, might influence decisions."

• 19 percent of you said: "I love beer, but it would never influence a vacation decision."

• 5 percent of you said: "It is a huge factor. I only do beer-focused vacations."

Granted, there's a lot of space between those three choices, but it's refreshing to hear that so many of you opted for the most balanced choice. Beer is great, but you’ve got to live your life. In hindsight, we wish we’d included a mechanism that would’ve allowed us to see how many respondents actually work in the industry.

This week's Taster Tray was composed by Kendall Jones.