October 10, 1999 -- I began the third and final day of the GABF on a quest for pilsner. Unfortunately, as it turned out, I began on the wrong side of the Currigan Hall and the wrong side of the country.

Pilsners from the Pacific Northwest and Pacific Southwest, the two regions that occupied the Champa Street side aisle of the fest, are few and far between, or at least they are if the GABF is any indication. I did manage to find and sample several, including the eventual gold medal winner in the European-Style Pilsner category, Pilsner 500 from the Prescott Brewing Company of Prescott, Arizona, but for the most part, my quest came up empty.

Bottom-fermentation fares much better in the east, however, and my search was considerably more fruitful once I hit the North Central and North East regions in the middle and Stout Street side aisles.

The Hometown Blonde from New Glarus Brewing of New Glarus, Wisconsin, has a very nice aroma with a touch of sweetness mellowing a floral hop character, and a wonderfully balanced, refreshing body with a dry, flavourful finish, which makes me wonder whether there is there anything this brewery does not do well! Another stellar pilsner comes from Adamstown, Pennsylvania, by way of the Stoudt Brewing Company. A tasty, dry and somewhat restrained beer, the Stoudt Pilsner took the silver in the German-Style Pilsner category, with the New Glarus beer taking the bronze and (untasted) Smooth Talker Pilsner from the Local Color Brewing Company of Novi, Michigan, scoring the gold.

Rounding out the afternoon session was a pair of very different but similarly warming brews from New England and the Midwest: White Christmas Fig Ale from the Salem Beer Works of Salem, Massachusetts, and the Trident Tripel of Angelic Brewing from Madison, Wisconsin.

The Salem beer, brewed with ginger and figs, did not taste overtly of either, but held just enough spicy sweetness to leave the taster with the right impression. This is a fine winter warmer and a beer that I suspect would be a natural match for the proverbial Christmas "figgy pudding." The Trident Tripel is a very perfumey, spicy beer very much in style and a deserving winner of the silver medal in the rather vaguely defined Belgian-Style Ale category. (What else can you say about a style category that awards medals to both a tripel and a saison?)

The Saturday night session is such a notorious madhouse and an even worse than normal place to make tasting notes that I left my tape recorder at the hotel and travelled the fest with only pen and paper in hand. As a result, when I unexpectedly made my favourite brewery find of the fest, I was reduced to standing in the middle of the floor balancing pad in one hand and glass in the other while I tried desperately to record some worthy thoughts on the beers of the Southhampton Publick House of Southhampton, New York.

There were only a few centilitres of the Double Ice Bock left, but brewer Phillip Markowski, who estimates the potent brew's alcohol content at somewhere around 20%, was good enough to grant me sufficient that I was able to be hugely impressed with the depth and complexity of the beer. Similarly, the Southhampton Secret Ale, a sort of altbier on steroids, struck me as a most laudable, earthy, full-bodied brew.

What really shook my beer tasting world, however, was the Southhampton Saison, a fabulous interpretation of this classic Belgian style. Spicy, fruity, with wonderfully authentic aromatics, this is the brew that Belgian beer lovers should taste if they wish to sample the enticing flavours of a fresh saison and are not able to get to Brasserie Dupont in Tourpes, Belgium, in order to do so.

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