To my disappointment tweet beat the phrase that was my own particular choice. For me, “beer summit” was the standout. Politics aside, the most powerful man in the world inviting two other guys to his house to settle a problem over beer said something about some of the finest qualities about beer.

While President Obama’s beer summit attracted all the headlines, beer summits had a special significance for me in 2009 for another reason. Last year I had my own beer summit that made a statement about the finest qualities of beer. My beer summit was with beer itself.

Last September I celebrated my 40th birthday with something that I had long looked forward to, a trip to Denver and the Great American Beer Festival. To me, the GABF was the center of the brewniverse. It was the place at which the most exciting and effervescent beer culture in the world came together to show off its best. I could go there and try the beers that I had heard so much about. I would meet the brewers—the assorted rockstars, the innovators, the gonzo alchemists—that I had read so much about, not to mention the American beer writers who had written about them, the people whose work I admire and who inspire me daily in what I do.

I was excited, very excited. I was traveling 8,000 miles and wanted to try everything, go everywhere and meet everyone.

Even now, the first day and a half is still a blur. I landed in Denver in the morning and didn’t stop. There were tastings, launches and gatherings to attend, breweries to visit and people to meet and, of course, the first session of the Festival. I was a hyperactive kid in a candy store and I neither noticed nor cared. I had a list that needed to be ticked or I had wasted my time in being there.

I didn’t stop to realize that I set myself a task similar to taking a drink from a fire hose; I was so focused on trying that I had no time for enjoying.

It took a baseball game to bring this realization home.

While ticking yet more beers off my list at Wynkoop Brewery, a group of Colorado Rockies fans enjoying a beer before the game heard my Australian accent and struck up a conversation. Beer people being good people, they surprised me by inviting me to join them at the baseball game.

As much as I enjoyed everything about my trip to Denver, the baseball game still remains the highlight. For three hours I sat enjoying good company and learning some of the finer points about the game of baseball and the culture of watching it. Of course, I enjoyed a number of beers (Fat Tire Amber Ale, from memory, I wasn’t taking notes), but for three hours beer wasn’t the focus.

My personal beer summit was more about realizing that with beer, discussing it isn’t to analyze, discuss and debate it. The point is to enjoy it. Barrel-aged, Brett-infused hop monsters that have spent three months in the hull of a North Sea ferry before being triple frozen and concentrated to 40 percent are exciting, but sometimes the best beer is simply just a just a good one thoroughly enjoyed. Sometimes, the most memorable beer is the one that you barely notice as you enjoy the company of the people you are with or sit on the edge of your seat in the bottom of the ninth, with scores tied and two men on base.

All the same, I still have to get back to Denver one day to finish off the rest of my list….

A sizeable proportion of the attendees, however, make their way to the stage at the back of the huge hall. Over the next couple of hours, Chris Swersey of the Brewers Association will read the names of the award-winning breweries whose beers have taken bronze, silver and gold medals in the GABF Beer Judging competition. Delighted brewers mount the stage to collect a medal, shake the hand of Brewers Association president Charlie Papazian and pause for a photograph, as a perfectly-coordinated PowerPoint slide displays the category winners overhead.

Swersey reads with speed: there are over 200 awards to go through. The audience applauds, even whoops occasionally for popular breweries, but sections of the crowd peel off as he announces the winners in highly competitive categories. There will be a run on those award-winning beers as the afternoon wears on.

“I know those beers will be gone before I even get off the stage,” sighs Swersey, who is the competition manager, as well as the emcee for the awards ceremony.

The highest honors come at the end, though, when Swersey announces three awards for Brewery of the Year in the small, medium and large brewery categories. These medals are based on points allocated according to the number and types of medals won over the course of the whole competition.

“The coolest experience I’ve ever had here was probably first time I saw a really good friend, someone I’d brewed with, walk across the stage to accept Brewer of the Year,” he recalls.

Then it’s over until next year. The crowd disperses in search of newly-decorated brews to taste. Printed lists of award-winners are ready, as are electronic press releases and an on-line searchable database of winners. The final, public session of the festival on Saturday evening will drink the winners’ booths dry. By Sunday, the coveted medals will be generating buzz among beer lovers across the country.

And it all looks so easy.

Looking Back

“The Great American Beer Festival” was a pretty gutsy name to give to the early beer gatherings that were held in Boulder, CO nearly 30 years ago. “American” they were: greatness would wait. But these events established a new, singularly American approach to beer appreciation and, later, to beer evaluation.

The festival’s first professional beer competitions were held in 1987. Organized by Daniel Bradford, GABF festival director at the time and now the publisher of this magazine, the competitions had the same purpose 21 years ago that they have today: to educate consumers in the diversity of beer by recognizing the finest examples of different beer styles. The goal today remains to honor “three world-class beers that best represent each beer style category as described and adopted by the GABF.”

In the world of beer taxonomy, there are splitters and lumpers, as there are in any system of categorization. The GABF represents the splitters’ school, with the number of styles proliferating over the years to more than 70. European brewers are often amazed, even dismissive, being accustomed to competitions with far fewer groupings. Yet the finely partitioned categories reflect the fascination American brewers have had with the beer styles they have both borrowed and shaped: there is English IPA, for example, but there is also American IPA—a new and distinct style. The two can’t be evaluated by the same criteria.

The categories have shifted over the years as some beer styles have lost their luster and others have become the new darlings of the craft beer world. This year, for example, Fresh Hop Ale, American Belgo-Style Ale and Leipzig-Style Gose have joined the category list, just as various sour beer styles did in recent years.

The GABF judging tracks the changes in American brewing culture, sets guidelines for the widest range of styles, then aims to tell the beer-loving public where the finest examples are being made. It’s a straightforward mission—and one that requires organizational skills befitting a military commander, thousands of hours of volunteer and paid effort, and six months to execute.