Saturday night, the last night of the Craft Brewers Conference in Chicago — it being a World Beer Cup year — there was an awards banquet where the medals are handed out to a packed crowd of brewers and beer industry people. This year’s banquet, with 2,000 people, is believed to be the biggest beer dinner ever done — somebody call Guinness. At five courses, that’s 10,000 plates. The amount of food used reads like those lists you see for Oktoberfest. The dinner used 600 gallons of beer to pair with the courses, 200 gallons of beer to cook with, 400 pounds of butter, 300 loaves of bread, 500 pounds of onions, 600 pounds of pork belly, 160 pounds of mushrooms, 275 dozen eggs, 160 pounds of malt and 6 gallons of honey. The meal was created by Sean Paxton and Randy Mosher, with the recipes and cooking by Sean Paxton, a.k.a. the Homebrew Chef. It was impossible to capture the whole banquet space with a photo, so below is a short video of the beer dinner’s setting, shot shortly before it began.

Randy Mosher and Sean Paxton.

Here, Sean and Randy explain the beer dinner we’re about to enjoy.

The five courses are detailed below in the slideshow. Despite the size of the dinner, the service was surprisingly swift and before we knew it, it was time for the World Beer Cup award ceremony to begin.

After the dinner; Matt Brynildson, Nancy Johnson and Sean Paxton.

Below is a slideshow of the World Beer Cup dinner. This Flickr gallery is best viewed in full screen. To view it that way, after clicking on the arrow in the center to start the slideshow, click on the button on the bottom right with the four arrows pointing outward on it, to see the photos in glorious full screen. Once in full screen slideshow mode, click on “Show Info” to identify each photo.