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 (#DenBeer), 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.

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 to 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 with 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.