• Confirmation of Entries
• Shipping Your Judging Beers
• Festival Beer Shipment and Transportation (Microstar)

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Confirmation of Entries

After your registration form has been received, a confirmation will be sent to you on July 22, 2011. The first confirmation will come as an email. Please review the confirmation letter very closely and confirm that all of the information is correct. Spelling and capitalization counts! Once you sign off, all of your information for the competition and festival program will be taken from this. This confirmation will include the following:

• Your brewery information.
• A listing of all of your beers and the categories they are entered in.
• Your specific drop-off point, with a date for delivery of your festival beer, and the name and phone number or email for your contact. Your beer will be kept cold at the drop-off point until a refrigerated truck picks it up and brings it to Denver. Once in Denver the beer will be placed in cold storage at the Anheuser-Busch wholesale operation, which acts as the Festival’s licensed host distributor. If you elect to ship your own beer, you must prepay the freight. Anheuser-Busch will refuse any C.O.D. shipments.
• If any information is incorrect, make the changes directly onto the confirmation letter.
• You may also change beers at this time, but only if a category has not closed since the entry deadline. Please contact Chris Williams at 720-473-7671 to confirm that there is space in your desired category before making these changes.
• You must sign off that the information on the confirmation is correct. You can either sign the confirmation and fax back to 303-447-2825 or send an email to williams@brewersassociation.org stating that all of your information is correct.
• THE SIGNED CONFIRMATION MUST BE RETURNED BY AUGUST 4, 2011.
• You will also be sent the no charge invoice. This is to be sent along with your festival beers.

You will also be mailed some other competition items. This will mail at the beginning of August and include the following:

• Keg labels that must be attached to each keg being sent to the Festival. Be sure to write BOTH your brewery name and the beer name. This is important as just writing “stout” on there does not help us to know where the beer needs to go.
• Pre-printed category labels for your entries for judging.

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Shipping Your Judging Beers

Your brewery must provide at least six (6) 12-ounce containers; four (4) 22-ounce containers; or the equivalent of at least 72 ounces for each judged entry–regardless of size, send a minimum of 4 bottles of each brand being judged. As in years past, entries submitted with less than the requested quantity of beer may not be judged.

Be sure to use the pre-printed category labels for your entries for judging. If your product is bottle conditioned, and you wish it poured carefully, please add a label to the bottle with that request.

If your product contains yeast and you wish it to be roused, please add a label to the bottle with that request.

Bottles will be chosen at random during the competition; labels requesting a certain pouring order will not be honored, and will be removed prior to judging.

Containers sent for the judging panel cannot be returned.

All beers to be judged must be shipped separately from your festival beers to:

Anheuser-Busch
Attn: GABF Judging
1455 E. 62nd Ave.
Denver, CO 80216
Attn: Warehouse Dock

These beers must be received between September 6 and 9. Late entries will no longer be accepted. Last minute brand changes or late entries are a significant cause of sample handling problems and database inaccuracies, and these requests are also unfair to your fellow competitors. GABF will not accept entries that arrive after September 9.the possible exception of breakage during shipping that is verified by the GABF Beer Manager. GABF will not be responsible for any aspect of judging or beer handling for entries that arrive with unapproved brand changes. If you have any issues with your shipping please contact Bradley Latham at 720-473-7672 or bradley@brewersassociation.org.

Breweries that do not bottle or can, should clearly label their beers to be judged, using the pre-printed labels provided, with the name of the beer, the category number and name, and the subcategory name and letter. This information should match the information provided on your registration form. Be sure to label your bottles correctly. GABF will not be responsible for bottles that are mislabeled.

Pre-printed labels will be mailed around July 21. If the preprinted labels are not correct, please handwrite a correct label or make corrections to the pre-printed label. The Festival will not resend labels. YOU CANNOT MAKE CATEGORY CHANGES AT THIS TIME. If something is incorrect, please contact Chris Williams at williams@brewerassociation.org or 720-473-7671.

Looking for ways to save money on shipping ? Brewers in geographical areas consolidate shipments into pallets when sending their judge beers. More and more brewers are getting together with local breweries and shipping pallets of their judging beers together. This saves you time and money! So for 2011, consider calling other breweries in the area, or contacting your local guild to discuss the option of palletizing your judge beers, and shipping them together via freight.

Guidelines For Shipping Your Judging Beer

Make sure your judging beers are packaged extremely well to avoid breakage during shipping. Each year we receive entries destroyed due to poor packaging. If samples break during shipping due to poor packaging and replacement samples do not arrive prior to the deadline, these beers may not be judged. Additional shipping costs due to breakage are the sole responsibility of the brewery, not the GABF.

• Wrap each bottle individually in bubble wrap.
• Place all bottles standing upright in the shipping container (either styrofoam or cardboard). All bottles placed in the same direction (tops up) and should be separated with cardboard.
• Fill the shipping container to the top with packaging material (bubble wrap preferred). If you use packing peanuts, place them in plastic bags first.
• Wrap the original box in a plastic bag (to avoid possible leakage that will result in your beers not being delivered) and then place the box, with bottle tops pointing up, in a strong cardboard shipping box.
• Make sure EVERY bottle from the same entry is shipped in the same container. DO NOT SHIP ONE ENTRY IN MULTIPLE CONTAINERS.
• Shipping containers (such as coolers, etc.) will not be returned to the brewery.
• Feel free to send along extra beer or brewery swag to donate to the volunteers who work many hours in the cooler sorting the beers into the 83 different categories.

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