It's Barley Wine Time

It’s the biggest, boldest, baddest beer festival in the state. The Great Alaska Beer and Barley Wine Festival (GABBF) is Friday and Saturday Jan. 20 and 21at the Egan Convention Center. Three sessions bait your attendance at this 23rd annual event.

Big beer is the feature. Barley wine is a style of beer that embodies boldness. It ranges from light to dark, but it’s hugely flavorful. Nowhere else is this style of beer so celebrated. Alaskans understand light, dark and power. If you’re into Alaska and you’re into beer, this festival is for you. It’s not for the faint of palate or liver.

Doing this festival right and accomplishing your sudsy goals takes planning, even if you just want to walk in and fire for effect.

Parking downtown is a bitch. I’ve got a solution. Don’t drive. You’re an idiot if you do and not just because of the parking. Driving puts you at risk. Driving impaired gives craft beer a bad name. Don’t do it.

Before you set out, figure out which session you want to attend. This is always easy for me–I attend all three. Because I know your pocketbook and your liver might not be able to handle a total of 11 hours of beery nirvana, if I had to attend just one session, it would be the Saturday Connoisseur Session from 2-5 p.m. It’s an hour shorter than the Friday and Saturday 6-10 p.m. Festival Sessions, but it’s worth it for a number of reasons.

It’s $55, or $10 more than the Friday and Saturday Festival Sessions, but integral to the GABBF are the annual Barley Wine and Winter Beer Competitions. The winners of these prestigious beer-offs are announced at the Connoisseur Session, but even if you don’t care about that, one of the rules of the competition is that any beer entered has to be poured at that session. Barley wines and winter beers are typically bigger and bolder than standard styles and they’re typically more expensive to produce. Some of our smaller local breweries only pour these goods at this session.

Because of the price and the mid-day session, it’s typically less crowded and you can get to the goods–barley wines and other styles–with a little more elbow room. Even if your goal is just to sample as much as can, odds are you’ll accomplish that easier at this session.

Over 70 breweries are represented at the fest and you’ll have around 300 different beers to choose from, so planning what you want to sample and how you want to sample it is crucial because you’ll be lucky to get through even half of them, even if you attend all three sessions. You have to be choosy.

Tactically, being choosy is best accomplished by carefully going through the festival program that’s part of the admission price. The program is particularly well-composed and not just because I write the intro to the piece every year.

Before I hit the floor, I’ll take a few minutes and strategize. If it’s barley wines I’m after–and it typically is–I’ll circle each of those to get through first. If you’re a hardcore IPA fan, you won’t be disappointed, but the same strategy will ensure you get the best of the best. The other thing I look for is beers we don’t normally get up here. If it’s new, I circle it and opportunistically reach for those when they’re proximal to the barley wine I’m after.

Regardless of the style you’re after or what you want to drink, get samples from our local Alaska breweries first. These breweries are prominently featured on the west end of the festival floor. This area is typically the most crowded, especially later in the sessions.

The GABBF brings most of our Alaska breweries together under one roof, more so than any other festival in the state. Because many of our breweries are small and geographically isolated, they don’t attend all of Alaska’s fests, but most attend this one.

I don’t like the crowds and the hustle and bustle that GABBF brings to Anchorage. I like the jibe and the feeling though and, in the dead of winter, this festival warms me up.

Hanging out in the Alaska section is like a family reunion. Most of the serious craft beer drinkers hang there, so I tend to see a ton of people I know. I get to rub elbows with those brewers I only see once a year at this fest. Look for me there.

Taking care of your body before, during and after the fest is prudent. Eat before you drink. Regardless of the session, allow an extra hour or so downtown and patronize one of the excellent eateries in the downtown corridor. Have your ride drop you off someplace within walking distance of the Egan. Drinking a boat load of beer on an empty stomach is a recipe for disaster. Take it from me, preloading is not advisable. There’s plenty of great beer waiting for you on the festival floor.

These venues appreciate your business before the festival rather than after. When GABBF sessions let out, it constitutes the biggest bar breaks downtown every year. Finding a table while up to 2,200 other people are doing the same creates a challenge for patrons and restaurateurs alike. Don’t sully craft beer’s reputation by being a jerk and stumbling into a place with an attitude.

Seasoned festgoers have a cliché: hydrate or die. Water is your friend. I carry a water bottle and try to drink water, ounce for ounce, with the beer I consume. I’ll get a 2-ounce sample of beer and wash it down with a 2-ounce gulp of water. This fends off dehydration–one of the primary causes of a hangover–and helps reset my palate for the next sample.

When I get home, I try to pound even more water–at least a pint–along with a couple of Excedrins, the most effective anti-hangover pill for me.

Finally, attend the festival with patience. It gets very tight on the floor during peak hours, but remember, everyone else is trying to get to the same beer you are and probably having as much fun. Treat your servers respectfully; they’re all volunteers.

Go big. Be prepared. Be respectful and be safe. Come away fulfilled and even more in love with what craft beer’s all about in Alaska.