Today’s infographic, on the first day of this year’s Great American Beer Festival, is a comparison of statistics from GABF in 1982 vs. 2011, two years ago on the festival’s 30th anniversary. It was created by Joey McDaniel, one-half of the Bay Area blog Wet Your Whistles.
That’s very interesting of course. The great line about the inaugural event is that Charlie Papazian discussed his plan to create this event with Michael Jackson and Michael responded, “Great idea, but what will you do for beer”? Allowing for Jacksonian wit, that meant of course that it was worth doing albeit the search for characterful beer would be a studied one. I am sure Anchor Steam was there, Sierra Nevava Pale Ale if Grossman-Camusi had it operating that early, Rainier’s Ale aka The Green Death (when it was still good), maybe 12 Horse Ale from Genessee, perhaps some of Yuengling’s beers, perhaps Augsburger, Point Special and… what else I wonder? It would be interesting to see the full list. I’m sure they still had a good time.
Gary
Follow up: I should have realized “everything” is online, so here is the 1982 programme with a full list of, and some very interesting notes on, the beers:
http://www.greatamericanbeerfestival.com/news/the-great-american-beer-festival%C2%AE%E2%80%94then-and-now/
Most of what I mentioned above was there but also e.g., Ballantine IPA, River City’s beers, Boulder Brewing’s beers, and a couple of Black Horses. (I always thought Champale’s was much better than Fred Koch’s).
Interesting that the ’82 Ballantine IPA was using Cascade, and Bullion. This makes it even a more plausible progenitor for the APA style than I would have thought.
Gary