Little nuggets from GABF

This year was my second year to attend the Great American Beer Festival, the first being 2008.  I figure going every other year is a fairly reasonable goal, although I wouldn't complain if I could go every year.  I usually use Twitter to do some "on-the-spot" blogging of beer reviews as I sample them; you can catch them at PortRoyalBrew.

I didn't get lots of pictures, only a couple on my cell phone's camera:

 This was a pretty cool 1/5 scale model of the brew house of Ninkasi Brewing, including cutaways to see inside the brewing vessels.

If you've ever wondered what "mash rakes" in a pro brewery look like, wonder no more.

This is a new malt from Briess that just debuted on October 1 of this year.  It's a debittered, 500 deg L seasonal malt in their new Maltster's Reserve series.  There were big bowls of different malts that you could snag some grain to chew; this one would be awesome for a Black IPA or Cascadia Dark Ale.  The other seasonal malts are Caracrystal Wheat malt for Jan-Mar, Carabrown malt for Apr-Jun, and Midnight Wheat malt (550 deg L malted wheat!) for Jul-Sep.