This past Saturday night Dave and I joined some friends for a fun evening in Colorado Springs celebrating Colorado craft beers at the All Colorado Beer Festival.

I didn’t take any good pictures during the evening, unfortunately, but I did want to show off our take of stickers that we collected. Dave and I want to come up with a classy way to display the sticker in our new basement bar. We’ll take any and all ideas.

Back to the beer fest: for $30 per person, visitors were able to enjoy from over 60 Colorado* beer vendors. If you’re unfamiliar with beer festivals, you receive a 4 oz. mini-beer glass (made of Lexan-type plastic). And armed with it you could taste to your heart’s content. The variety of beers were widespread. You name it, there was a sample to be had: dunkelweizens, IPAs, reds, Belgian whites (of which there were many). I even tasted a “pineapple cyder [sic]” that was pretty potent. I think the most unusual beer I tried was Blue Moon’s (cough, cough Coors‘, cough, cough) Harvest Moon pumpkin ale, which was presented to me with a sprinkle of brown sugar/pumpkin pie spice blend on the crook of my hand. I was to lick the spice, then drink the ale…tequila-shot-style.

*I was surprised to see Anheuser Busch at the event, but they have a Fort Collins brewery. They claimed to be serving only the beers that were brewed in Fort Collins: Bud Light and Shock Top Pumpkin Ale. OOOOOOkay.

Here is a sampling of some of the companies that offered my favorite brews:

• Great Storm Brewing, Colorado Springs.
• Rocky Mountain Brewery, Colorado Springs. Their Brunette Nut Brown Ale is yummy.
• Kannah Creek Brewing Company, Grand Junction. Mainly because they had a beer called Standing Wave Pale Ale. Not only is that a cool name, but it wasn’t half bad either.
• Prost Brewing Company, Denver. They offered a very clean-tasting Pils.

The All Colorado Beer Festival organization is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit. This should mean that most of the money raised from the event supports charities. In this case, the organization is supporting three charities in the local area: THEATREWORKS, The Empty Stocking Fund, and The Homefront Cares. The latter is near and dear to my heart because it’s helping local military families.

The organization has donated over $120,000 to the charities since it started in 2008. However, some are critical of a beer festival having tax exempt status.

What do you think?