Thanks for joining us here on 9 news.
Plus, I'm Chris Bianchi.
This week marks the start of the
Great American Beer Festival,
which will run on Thursday,
Friday and Saturday.
The festival is one of the largest ticketed
beer festivals in the entire world,
and it's back this year after
a 2 year hiatus due to COVID.
We chatted with Charlie Papazian,
the founder of the Great
American Beer Festival,
about how it started,
what it means,
and how it's taken off in the last 40 years.
Here's our interview with
CC. Under the Great American
Beer Festival in 1982,
visions of 40 years later were were
distant to too distant to think about,
and just pulling off this crazy
idea was the priority, which was.
Pretty hairy adventure in 1982 cause no,
I understood what we were doing.
In 1981 I went to the UK and went to
the Great British Beer Festival for the
first first time in my life and I was
invited to judge the best of show at the
Beer Festival and in Leeds, England.
And I walked into this beer
festival and they were, you know,
10s of thousands of people.
Having a good time at this beer
festival that's celebrated.
National beer culture,
and I said I I couldn't help but think like,
well, this is a pretty cool idea
and after a few beers, you know?
The juices started working and I thought,
huh?
I wonder if we could pull anything
like this off and and the United
States and you know,
I was with Michael Jackson.
The beer.
Beer guru back in the day and and
that evening I we were having
a beer at a local pub in London
and I asked I suggested to him,
well do you think Michael do you
think we could do a Great American
beer festival in the United in
the United States and he said.
He kind of chuckled a little bit,
and he said, Ohh yeah,
Charlie, it's a great idea,
but where are you gonna get the beer?
Because, you know,
there were only 40 breweries
in the United States then,
you know,
like this idea of a beer festival to
celebrate American beer culture was.
Was the last thing on people's
mind because everything was going
in a direction of light.
3 Brewers there were people were
predicting there would be only three
breweries left in the United States.
And I think, well,
1982 was a low point,
was about 42 and from that point on
it it's here we are 9000 plus the
only beer enthusiasts that existed
in those days were home Brewers and I
was teaching a home brewing class in.
In Boulder and people from the
Denver Metropolitan and Boulder area
were taking my class over a 10 year
period from 1973 to about 1983.
And.
You know,
there were other kinds of beer enthusiasts,
but there were far and few between.
They were cane collectors and beer
label collectors and people who
got to travel and go to Europe
and they would come back and say,
wow, why can't we make if beer is
good as this here in this country?
So there was that sentiment and
things change.
You know,
the culture was changing people's
attitudes about beer and food and.
Supporting local initiatives.
That idea was just sprouting and.
You know they deregulated the the.
The airline business,
so people all of a sudden had a
little bit more access to fly and.
People were tired of the homogenized
Society of,
you know, white bread and velveeta
cheese kind of, you know, and.
You know, there was a small core of
home Brewers that kind of carried
the carried the pitcher, so to speak,
and that's the way it was in.
The 70s and low and behold.
1982 the first Great American Beer festival.
Happen somehow it happened,
you know, and I have to give.
I have to give the breweries that had faith
in this upstart organization called the
American Home Brewers Association in Boulder,
Co not many people knew about Boulder, Co.
There's those days.
And they said yes to donating beer,
which was incredible.
I mean, that was.
I mean, it's so heartwarming even
today to think that those small,
they're small, regional breweries that.
Still existed in those days.
Had the the,
the faith in this upstart group of
home Brewers that wanted to put
together this beer festival that
celebrated American beer culture.
And, you know, I got to think that these,
you know.
The circumstances and the beer
business were so dire in those days.
I mean,
it was the 34 big giant breweries dominating.
99% of the beer market and these
regional breweries, you know this,
they they must have thought
this was a glimmer of.
Of hope for the beer business.
Maybe something would come out of it.
And they participated and many of them came.
The Beer festival in those days
was largely just a kegger.
You know, one brand,
the beer being celebrated somewhere
and given away for practically nothing,
probably.
We invited the special beers from
the regionals.
We didn't.
We didn't necessarily go out and
get their light logger.
We tried to get their porters and
stouts and Octoberfest and cream
ales and something different,
and it worked really, really well.
So the beer Festival is is kind of a.
You know. A long shot from my original.
Home Brew making classes here in Boulder, Co.
And.
Yeah, it it is an unusual beer festival
because the whole idea of getting
together all these breweries under
one roof was really totally strange.
But, you know, when we first started,
you know, it was a new idea of a new
way of presenting beer and selling,
celebrating beer.
Really all all we were interested
in is having a reason to celebrate
what we were doing.
You know, that's essentially why we why we
started the Great American Beer Festival.
And what better way to celebrate beer
than enjoying it amongst people we know
and people we got to know through beer?
And. You know, over the 40 years of
the Great American Beer Festival.
You know. The behavior of the attendees
has been pretty phenomenal, I think.
You know what you think with all that people?
Some people think with all that
beer there's gonna be problems.
But.
Really?
You know what we hear from law
enforcement officers and things they
said they have more problems at sports
games and concerts than they do at
the Great American Beer Festival,
consistently so.
Yeah, sure,
there's people that enjoy the beer too much,
you know,
but that's a small percentage of what
happens and it's gotten better over
the years, so, you know, this Saturday night.
Used to be.
Little bit rowdier than
than Thursday and Friday,
but that has mellowed out quite
a bit in my opinion.
The spirit of the whole event,
kind of, you know, kind of in.
Emotionally intoxicates you into hey,
this is fun and enjoyable and
people are friendly and nice and.
You know,
you don't have to get loaded up on
alcohol to get to have a good time.
I retired from the Brewers
Association in January 2019,
so I'm no longer involved in the
day-to-day organizing of the festival.
Still looking forward to going.
But you know, it's it's I think
that the staff that the Brewers
Association and the directors of the,
you know, the event.
They really seem to have managed
to keep the beer festival relevant,
like how many events have been
going for 40 straight years?
And you know, if you have an event that
you want to keep having, you have to.
To reinvent yourself every once in a while
you have to realize that that cult you know,
society changes, cultures, you know,
attitudes change and you just kind of make
the the whole event relevant to the people
who are there and the people who are the
kind of people who were there in 1982
through 1985 it was everything was new.
So that was very different and
and now we're 2022. And you know,
everybody in there has experience,
great beer and has visited
breweries and enjoys the,
the eccentric as well as the traditional.
So there are reasons that that and
in creating an environment that gives
people a reason to come and we talked
about several of them and the, you know,
supporting the whole idea of camaraderie
and being able to talk with each other.
I mean you don't go in there and
you don't get blasted with a with.
With an orchestra,
orchestrated music or anything,
because you want to have,
to a certain extent,
you want to have a conversation with
people and the whole idea of food and beer
that that culture has evolved as well.
And there's an opportunity to do
that and there's opportunity to hear
people speak about their experiences
and that's what the beer festival.
Is today in?
The 50th anniversary will be something else,
and it'll be just as much fun
seeing all these.
Regional, local state beer festivals
arise over the years.
It's been very.
Very rewarding and reassuring.
You know, if this was a if we
were doing it for the money.
I mean,
I'm sure if it was a corporation
doing the beer festival they they
would they may feel threatened that
these other beer festivals were
popping out all over the country,
but we were actually encouraged them and and.
Gave seminars and presentations and
stories and articles and interviews
on how to do these kinds of festivals
because we wanted to raise.
Raise the water, so to speak,
the the ocean of beer to a level
where it was accessible to to
everyone here in this country and.
You know, the focus with the
Great American Beer Festival.
Sure, we had ideas.
Well, can we have a traveling
Great American beer festival?
Should we have another one in
another part of the country?
We tried that one year in
and it didn't go so well.
That was Baltimore.
I forget the year, but it didn't go
so well for a number of reasons.
And, you know,
after that we just looked at ourselves,
said, you know, really,
this is the Great American Beer Festival.
Let's put all our energy into
making it the greatest of the Great
American Beer Festival every year.
And not try to.
Be the one and only beer
festival that people would.
More ever wanna go to we will.
We encourage people to go to all kinds
of beer festivals cause it's the.
It's kind of the.
It was the mission and the SILLIES the
mission of the Brewers Association.
I'm sure it's to to elevate it,
elevate the spirit of enjoying beer
responsibly and celebrating the
culture that we have in one event.
Can't do it all.