Denver Beer Fest Is Back - Bigger & Brewier Than Ever In 2012

Fourth Annual, Nine-Day Celebration of Beer Returns Oct. 5-13

DENVER, July 24, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- More beer is brewed in Denver than any other city, so it is only natural that The Mile High City honors its brewing tradition with a nine-day celebration of all things beer. More than 150 beer-centric events are scheduled for the fourth annual Denver Beer Fest, Oct. 5-13, 2012, including Meet the Brewer Nights, beer-paired dinners, firkin nights, brewer versus brewer competitions and the first-ever Denver Beer Fest-official Denver Beer Crawl.

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Denver Beer Fest events will be listed on DenverBeerFest.com, which will also have information on Denver brewery tours and the city's brewing history, as well as profiles of craft breweries around the state. The website will be updated daily beginning in September.

Denver Beer Fest is designed to overlap the Great American Beer Festival (GABF), the "Super Bowl of Beer," which takes place Oct. 11-13, 2012, at the Colorado Convention Center.  GABF is considered to be the most prestigious and coveted beer competition in America.  It is certainly the world's largest beer celebration with a Guinness World Record for the most beers ever made available for tasting at a single event – some 2,400 different brews from 500 breweries in 2011. 

GABF tickets go on sale to the public on August 2, 2012, but craft beer lovers have to act fast. Last year, the event sold out in seven days and predictions are they will break that record in 2012.

Denver Beer Fest was created to offer more beer events around GABF, and also give local breweries an opportunity to showcase their products to the 50,000 beer lovers who attend the granddaddy of beer festivals, as well as Denver locals who can't make GABF 2012. 

Denver Beer Fest events include:

• Denver Beer Crawl: the first-ever VISIT DENVER produced pub crawl that will showcase a dozen Colorado beers at many of Denver's finest bars, tap houses and breweries
• Rare Beer Tastings: once-in-a-lifetime tastings of unique beers that will not ever have the opportunity to be consumed by the masses due small quantity batches
• Meet the Brewer Nights: an opportunity for beer lovers to meet the people that craft their favorite brews
• Firkin nights: a Firkin is an original cask conditioned beer; on a Firkin Night, the one-of-a-kind barrel of beer is tapped and everyone drinks it until it is gone, never to be exactly replicated again
• Tap Takeovers: in this event, a local brewery takes over all the taps at a bar or restaurant
• Beer-paired Dinners: a restaurant works with the brewery and has a different course paired with a different beer in a fixed-price dinner
• Beer Competitions: beers are paired off against each other, often with the bar patrons voting for their favorites, until there is one winner
• Beer Education: special programs or lectures that discuss different aspects of beer tasting or brewing
• Pub Crawls: two or more bars work together on a pub crawl, or beer walking tour, or beer cruiser bike night
• Brewery Tours: special theme-tours of breweries
• Beer Games: trivia nights, quizzes, contests, special events  

Denver Beer Fest is presented by VISIT DENVER, in partnership the Colorado Brewers Guild and the Denver Westword.  This year's sponsors include Boelter, the Downtown Denver Business Improvement District (BID), RTD-Denver and Denver Yellow Cab. Visit DenverBeerFest.com for more information.

About Denver Beer
Beer is booming in Denver and Colorado, with Denver doubling the number of breweries over the last 12 months. The first brewpub in the state was the Wynkoop Brewing Co., opened in 1988 by current Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (who is the first former brewer to be elected state governor since Sam Adams in 1794). The Colorado beer industry contributes $486 million to the state's economy on an annual basis, according to a study conducted by the University of Colorado in 2012. Watch this video to learn more about Denver's craft-brew culture.

The area between Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins is often called the Denver Beer Triangle and is considered to be the "Napa Valley of Beer" with the largest concentration of award-winning craft breweries in the country. This area is also home to the Coors Brewery, the largest single brewing site in the world. Denver ranks first in the nation in beer production per capita, and Colorado is home to four of the top-50 brewing companies in the nation. There are more than 140 breweries statewide. Denver was selected as the No. 1 micro-brew beer city in the nation in 2011 by the readers of Travel + Leisure magazine.

About VISIT DENVER, The Convention & Visitors Bureau
Celebrating more than 100 years of promoting the Mile High City, VISIT DENVER is a nonprofit trade association that contracts with the City of Denver to market Denver as a convention and leisure destination, increasing economic development in the city, creating jobs and generating taxes. Tourism is the second largest industry in Denver, generating $3.3 billion in annual spending in 2011, while supporting nearly 50,000 jobs. Learn more about Denver on the VISITDENVER website and at TOURISMPAYSDENVER, on Twitter @iknowdenver and the VISIT DENVER Facebook page, or by phone at 800 2 DENVER.

With press or photo inquiries, please contact:

VISIT DENVER contacts:
Rich Grant - (303) 571-9450 or [email protected]
Debbie Park - (303) 571-9451 or [email protected] or @debdbie
Katie Adamson - (303) 571-9418 or [email protected] or @colorado_kate

SOURCE VISIT DENVER, The Convention & Visitors Bureau