Big Beers Celebrates 20 Years of Influencing Craft Beer

By Steve Graham

If you’ve ever enjoyed a Juicy Bits IPA, you can thank the Big Beers Festival.

Colin Jones made a handshake deal with Neil Fisher five years ago. If Fisher won a medal for his homebrew at the Breckenridge event, they agreed that they would start a brewery. Fisher won two medals, and now Jones and Fisher operate and co-own Weldwerks Brewing Co., one of the most successful and acclaimed craft breweries in Colorado, and the brewer of the delectable Juicy Bits.

This type of history will be celebrated Jan. 9 to 11 at the 20th annual Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywine Festival, coming to Beaver Run Resort and Conference Center.

Partly due to his historic connection to the festival, Fisher will be one of two featured brewmasters this year. He chose Troy Casey, owner of Casey Brewing and Blending, as the other featured brewmaster.

Casey and Fisher will open the festival by hosting the traditional brewmasters’ dinner on Thursday, Jan. 9. They will offer double beer pairings to complement a menu created by executive chef Phil Dilks and his Beaver Run culinary team.

A Big Raffle at Big Beers

Finally, you might get a chance to sample some rare big beers, Belgians and barleywines even if you can’t get to Breckenridge for the annual Big Beers festival.

This year, nearly every participating brewery will donate at least one bottle or can of specialty beer, adding them to mixed cases that can only be won in a raffle drawing. Each case will include 12 rare or exclusive beers from top breweries around North America.

Ten of the randomly selected 12-packs will be individually raffled off at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 11, at the Beaver Run resort, but winners don’t need to be present to win.

A portion of proceeds from raffle sales will go to Breckenridge Mountain Rotary.

Raffle tickets cost $10 or $25 for three tickets, and are available online or at the festival.

For the blowout 20th anniversary event, they will also be joined by nearly every previous featured brewmaster, including founders and owners of prestige breweries around North America.

Laura Lodge started the festival two decades ago as a trade show for her brother’s beer distribution business. She still runs the show, but she said the greatly expanded festival has evolved in many ways. She added that a 20-year run was “not in anybody’s wildest dreams” when she first launched the trade show.

Lodge said the festival has become one of the hottest tickets in craft brewing because of the sense of camaraderie and rapport between brewers and other industry leaders.

For attendees, of course, another draw is all those high-gravity beers, many of which are exclusive to the festival.

Adam Avery led the first educational seminar at Big Beers, and was the first featured brewmaster. He is coming back with a special release of the Mephistopheles stout, which famously clocks in at 14.666 ABV.

For the first time, Avery will barrel-age the jet-black brew, and not just in any barrel. This special edition is aged in a 9-year-old Tennessee-style whiskey barrel that Leopold Brothers used for its own exclusive 10th anniversary blend.

“It’s going to be a super-amazing beer,” Lodge said.

Dogfish Head is sending out founder and president Sam Calagione, another former featured brewer, and a 2009 barleywine.

Lodge said the event is an occasion to honor these specialty beers and the industry leaders who will partake.

“They have all had a significant hand in where craft beer has come, so it’s kind of neat to celebrate where we are,” Lodge said.