The Great American Beer Festival brings not only scores of beer fans to Denver each year but also thousands of professional brewers. They come to pour beer at the fest, judge the annual awards, and attend the awards ceremony in the hopes of taking home some hardware. Many also use the fest as an excuse for a working vacation—a chance to drink around town, catch up with old colleagues, and scope out what’s new in the city’s ever-evolving beer scene.
This past year, the place to go, be seen, and catch up was Bierstadt Lagerhaus. At almost any point during operating hours, if you looked around the bar, you saw a veritable Who’s Who of brewing, from longtime industry leader Dick Cantwell to the celebrated Wayne Wambles of Cigar City. It was hard not to think of the prophetic line from Field of Dreams because when you talk to professional brewers, they’ll tell you that in their down time they like drinking lagers, and that’s all that Bierstadt serves.
Ashleigh Carter and Bill Eye built it. Everyone is coming.