Behind the scenes at the Great American Beer Festival

Ever wondered what it's like to work behind the scenes at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver?   I volunteered to help set-up and worked 3 four-hour shifts at the Colorado Convention Center yesterday and all I can say is - WOW - there is a LOT of work to be done to get this event ready for prime time.

I woke up around 5:30am to get ready. I live an hour north of Denver and had to hit the road by 6:15am if I was to get downtown in plenty of time to report for duty. Traffic wasn't bad and I found a nice parking spot just 2 blocks away from the Convention Center. I found the volunteer desk and checked in around 7:50am and entered the great hall.

The place had already had a lot of work done to it. The booths and tables were already set up and the CO2 gas lines and the giant plastic barrels that would house the kegs were there waiting for the beer to be delivered. We had several work crew Captains there organizing the crew. We must have had over 30 volunteers there to do the set-up work. Here is how the day went for me.

8:00am Gather round and get instructions from the crew Captains.

8:20-10:00am Receiving kegs from the fork lift crew and label them. Split off the duplicate kegs for storage on trucks in the loading docks. Deliver kegs to the booths and put them in plastic barrels. Lots of heavy lifting and use of dollys to transport brew.

10:00-10:15am Break time. Grab some water. Helped the folks from Alaskan Brewing to set up their booth and get to know them.

10:15pm - 12:15pm Ice delivery. Receive crate after crate of ice bags and deliver them to each booth and apply initial ice down all of the kegs. Lots of cold lifting and throwing of bags.

12:15-1:00pm Lunch time! People who were signed up for working a double set-up shift were given complimentary pizza and soft drinks for lunch. We sat inside the vendor booths to eat.

1:00-3:00pm Time to hook up all of the kegs to the tap lines and CO2. This was a massive undertaking. I had a crash course in keg tap technology. There were miles of hoses and 1800 different kegs to be hooked up. Not an easy task.

3:00-4:00pm More ice. Now that the kegs were hooked up we had to ice them down again and fill up the barrels.

4:00-5:00pm Troubleshooting time. We had to inspect every booth and look for problems. There were missing kegs, broken ice barrels that leaked, CO2 lines that needed fixing, more ice to be delivered, tables to be moved into place. Whew! Now everything looked ready to go.

5:00-5:30pm Check out from set-up duty and race downstairs to check-in for Brew Crew (pouring) duty. Received our white volunteer T-shirts and tasting cups and march back upstairs and report to our sections. I was assigned to Island "C" in the Mid Atlantic region.

5:30pm-10:00pm Pour beer! The sound of bagpipes filled the air signaling the start of the 2008 GABF. The crowd poured into the hall and the festival began. I was working at the Allentown / Bethlehem Brew Works booth (C14). They had 5 different brews including an amazing Pumpkin Ale, an outrageous Blueberry Belch wheat beer and a delicious sour Belgian Raspberry Lambic called Framboise.

I can tell you that after working for 14 hours that I was dog tired. My muscles hurt from all that lifting of kegs, ice and moving tables and standing on my feet all day. But, overall I was very pleased with how well organized the whole event was and how smoothly things went. The crowd behaved themselves for the most part and even the drunks weren't too obnoxious. I was able to get out of the building shortly after 10pm and get back home within an hour and a half.

I managed to take a lot of video during the day and will post a short report on the fest soon. I'm planning to return to Denver later this weekend to actually do some tasting sessions! I only managed to try about 8 beers last night while volunteering but that's OK. I needed to stay sober and alert to handle the non-stop pouring of beers.

I did manage to see several people I recognized last night and hope to spend more time with them later this weekend. It was a wonderful way to celebrate the wonderful world of craft beer. 

To watch a video of behind the scenes at the GABF head over to YouTube and check out the footage.