Real Beer co-founder Mark Silva interviews Charlie Papazian . . . with the help of Neal Stewart and Flying Dog Ales.
Straight from the floor of the Great American Beer Festival.
The Long Tail of Beer, Part 2 – Charlie Papazian from Neal Stewart on Vimeo.
Check out the Pete Slosberg interview as well.
I wonder if Charlie ever thought the GABF would get so big. I can’t imagine how big it could become in another 10-20 years. They would need to build a much bigger convention center to hold all of the beer fans!
I hope that the GABF doesn’t get much bigger (people wise) for a while. It’s crowded now and while most people behaved themselves, I don’t think it could really add many more people and still allow you to wander around easily. Perhaps they could add another day (Sunday afternoon?).
The brewers I talked to seemed a bit concerned that their beer was all disappearing sooner than they expected it to. If they have to end up bringing a lot more beer then it might get a bit too cost prohibitive for them to sign up for next year.
Given the economy, such as it is, I think it will be difficult to keep topping the numbers at the GABF each year.
Ha! I knew I saw Mark Silva in Denver this year … twice actually. Once at Falling Rock where I was given a hockey-style check from him. Thankfully I’m big and from Boston so I only noticed the hit but was unmoved. The second time was during our epic pub crawl that we do every year in Denver … Mark walked into Great Divide looked at the crowd and walked back out.
Both times he looked all business … 😉