I am going to assist to my second GABF and I want to be ready for that festival. I am travelling from Barcelona so I don’t know too many breweries from the States.
I am doing a list for the breweries that I HAVE TO try, but I would really appreaciate any other breweries that I can’t miss it too.
My list:
Three Floyds Brewing
Bottle Logic Brewing
Funky Buddha Brewery
Russian River Brewing Company
Great Divide Brewing Co.
Great Notion Brewing
Green Cheek Beer Co.
The Rare Barrel
The Bruery
Parkersburg Brewing Co
Toppling Goliath Brewing Co
WeldWerks Brewing Co.
Pizza Port
Modern Times
Cellarmaker
Revolution Brewing
Great Divide is in Denver, downtown (both locations). They probably won’t have much of a line at GABF but if you want to visit them it’s not far from the convention center. I’d recommend the barrel house over the production facility. Nicer taproom, better beer options, better service.
That said, if you don’t get caught in the handful of really long lines you can get through a lot of breweries. I went for the first time a few years back and made it through around fifty breweries. Most of your list will be breweries with long lines, but to put it in context the “long” line will be less than ten minutes of waiting. Many great breweries will have little to no line at all.
Are you coming to Denver for just GABF or will you be around town for a few days? There are a lot of brewery and tap takeover events that week.
54-40 out of Washington has great stuff.
Almanac does good sours/farmhouse. I’ve only had one or two of theirs but it was good.
Boneyard is a great brewery from Oregon
Foothills Brewing is one of my favorites from North Carolina.
NoDa Brewing from Charlotte is another good NC brewery.
Three Weavers is a good one out of the LA area
And that’s just a cursory glance at the list, but those are some of the ones I would be excited to see.
Thanks a lot for the recommendations. We are going to Denver just for the GABF, then we want to travel a little bit, so during 4 days would be my “beer holidays”.