The floor plan for this year’s Great American Beer Fest was released earlier this morning. Most notably this means that hardcore festival goers can begin plotting out their ultimate beer routes.  I’ve seen many approaches for GABF in the past. Here are a few to help you decide which route you might want to take first. We’ll be breaking down a few more routes in more detail in the coming weeks for our complete GABF Coverage:

• Rare Beer Route: During GABF a few breweries release rare beers at different time increments throughout the night. The only downside is that lines are outrageous and typically these batches are confined to a very limited amount.
• Interstate Breweries: Some people are only interested in trying new beers that they can find within their state. This really doesn’t make much sense to me because you can generally find these with great ease. However their logic is to discover which beers they like that they can most easily attain and drink frequently in the future.
• Non-interstate Breweries: This is generally the route I’ll be taking meaning that I’ll hit up the breweries who’s distribution that I can’t get ahold of in my own state and more so that I can’t get ahold of unless I’m in the actual state the the brewery is located in.  Examples include New Glarus, Surly, Cigar City. Word of the wise, New Glarus was completely tapped out in 45 minutes at each of the sessions last year.
• Style specific route: This is also an extremely popular strategy.  Sometime people will plan out a route of just sour beers or just IPAs, Bourbon Barrels, or Ryes. This can be a bit more difficult as the actual beer list typically doesn’t come out till the GABF guide is released. However some breweries are just notable for their IPAs or Bourbon Barrels or Ryes.
• Get Blitzed route: Not the wisest of routes to take but the get blitzed route just targets breweries that serve beer with the highest percent alcohol content.  Perhaps a more bang for your buck route. This will surely result in you getting the boot from GABF and several unpleasant reversals of fortune. DON’T TAKE THIS ROUTE!

So without further ado here is the link for this year’s GABF Floor Plan!