Great American Beer Festival preliminary brewery list

The 2019 GABF is coming October 3-5 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. Tickets go live tomorrow, and pre-sale tickets are available today for American Homebrewers Association and Brewers Association members. I got my tickets already and am excited to report from the convention floor.

A preliminary list of participating breweries is up. This only includes breweries who will be on the convention floor, not necessarily the breweries who will be in the three Pavilions (Brewers Studio Pavilion, CraftBeer.com Pavilion, and Protect Craft Guilds Pavilion) or the Hangout Spots (The Backyard, Collaboration Beer Competition Booth, GABF Pro-Am Booth, Heavy Medal Booth, The Jameson Caskmates Barrel Aged Beer Garden, and Meet the Brewer).

So far 700 breweries from 48 states plus DC are committed. The big players are of course Colorado, California, and Texas with 20%, 17.57%, and 6% of all participants, respectively. So far Arkansas and West Virginia are not represented but this is a preliminary list and does not reflect the other areas of the festival, so there is still hope.

As the Pavilions, Hangouts, and PAIRED lists are updated I’ll look at who is participating and from where. There are real economic costs to sending staff, beer, marketing materials, etc to Denver every year, so many breweries do not participate. 700 so far equals less than 10% of the total brewery count in the US. But there will likely be other who participate in the GABF competition but do not have a booth in the convention and/or only participate in their guild booth because of the lower cost of entry.

I’ll also look at strategies to approach such a large event as a ticketholder. Try one or two styles from anyone you can? Visit one brewery from every state? Only try breweries you have or haven’t heard of? Stand in all of the long lines looking for whalez? Or visit folks who have no lines? There’s a variety of approaches to 700+ breweries pouring 2+ beers each, so we’ll look at that closer to the main event.

In the meanwhile, check out the participating list. I’m exciting by so many familiar names and new names.