Hey there fellow porch dwellers new and old!  So nice of you to join us once again.  My friends and I started this site three months ago with the general interest in writing about beer, music, sports and pop culture.  Long term, perhaps two or three years down the road we had the goal of building something influential enough to receive press passes to the Great American Beer Festival.  Well that goal was kinda achieved two or three years early.

As such we’ve been busting nuts to try to provide you with complete coverage of the festival and I feel like we’ve done just that.  Over the past two weeks we’ve shared local breweries to check out in the area, we’ve put together dining and drinking guides for the city of Denver, we’ve crafted a number of different routes to take during the fest, and more substantially we’ve been calling and emailing breweries so that we could be the only site to give you a sneak peak of what each of the breweries will be pouring.  And now the Super Bowl of Beer is finally upon us.

Like Laura from our previous post, I’ve attended the festival as a volunteer for the past two years.  It can only be described as the adult version as a kid in a candy shop… if that candy shop happened to have almost every kind of candy you could possibly imagine.  It’s important to get to the Colorado Convention Center early, as the line will be insane and you want to spend as much time as possible in the actual fest.  Be sure to bring snacks, the more traditional route for festival goers is the pretzel around the neck, though I’ve seen bread, slim jims, doughnuts, you name it.  The key however is that the food must be worn and you might also want to avoid anything greasy.

Once you get in, I can assure you that it’ll be entirely overwhelming.  Come prepared with a game plan and be prepared to throw it out the door.  I will say that its important to hit some of the hotter breweries as soon as possible.  Last year New Glarus ran out in 45 minutes during each session.  If you plan on hitting some of the rare releases throughout the night be prepared to wait in enormous lines.  My suggestion is to avoid them.  Sure it’s cool to say you drank a thousand dollar beer (Sam Adams’s Utopias) but in the end its not worth waiting and missing out on other amazing beers.  If you plan on meeting up with people at the festival be sure to set a time and brewery to meet at and do not deviate from this plan.  In the past cell, and internet service have been almost obsolete.  It shouldn’t need repeating but hydrate, build your food base, take breaks, and remember it’s not a sprint it’s a marathon.  It really isn’t worth your price of admission to pass out within the first hour because you just kept drinking 120 Minute from DogFish Head.

Most importantly have fun with it.  Meet the brewers who brewed your favorite beers.  Discover new breweries, we’ve featured several to try throughout the past week.  And get creative.  Last year by the end of the festival we decided to try to find the most disgusting beer offered at the fest.  We succeeded.

As we mentioned earlier during the next three days we’ll be live blogging, live tweeting, instagraming, Facebooking, and more importantly drinking with you at the event.  Please check out the blog for up to the minute updates.  And follow us on Twitter @PorchDrinkingCO.  Also we’ll be giving away two sets of PorchDrinking T-Shirts to two random fans who see us at the festival, take a picture with us, like us or follow us on Facebook or Twitter and post it to either our Facebook Page or mention us on Twitter.

Also Friday we’ll be setting up a meet up at the festival itself to take you all around to some of our favorite finds from the first night.  So thats basically it.  We’re super excited and you should be too!  Stop by and say hi because really, we just want to meet new people who enjoy beer and love to share that love with us.  Happy 2012 Great American Beer Festival!

Sincerely

Tristan Chan