Statesman photographer Kerry Maloney and I are at Great American Beer in Denver this weekend and one thing is already very obvious after just one session — the state of craft beer in the USA is awesome.

We spent Thursday's night's opening session of the GABF walking around trying to find the best and funkiest beers the US has to offer and found a bunch — and likely only got to taste about 7% of the 1800 beers available.

(That is based on a very unscientific guess of 100 samples, so I hope my math is right. This is also why it is a good idea to get tickets to all four sessions. I'd like to get the percentage up to about 25% and I think I have a good shot by Saturday.)

But in that approximately 7 percent, we got to sample a bunch of world class stouts, porters, IPAs, lagers, beers aged in whisky barrels, beers brewed with exotic spices, and any other style you can think of.

The GABF will give out medals in 75 different categories Saturday, and there are more styles than that available on the floor, to give you an idea of the variety.

I didn’t notice any major new trends in American brewing scene, other than maybe a few more beers brewed with rye malt, which were all quite good, especially the Terra-Ryzed black rye lager, a collaboration between Terrapin Beer Co. from Athens, Georgia and Left Hand Brewing Co. from Longmont, Colorado.

I can also tell you that the Boise beer scene is standing tall. Ram brewers Kevin Bolen and Jake Schisel’s beers — the Taildragger IPA (American IPA category) the Clearwater Kolsch and Solitary Heron English summer ale — taste great and are getting a lot of love from the crowd.

The Grand Teton Brewing booth was very popular as well, so even though Idaho has scant representation, we are doing good quality-wise.

One of the problems of sampling 100 beers or so at one time is that notes that you take at the end of the night don’t make so much sense the next morning. So my ambition is to have a list of really unique and cool beers tasted by the end of the weekend, so check back on the blog later.

The vibe at the GABF is basically the same as it has been in previous years — relaxed and fun at the beginning of the 4 ½ hour session, and then rowdy and fun by the end. That is what happens when you get about 10,000 craft beer fans all in the same room drinking beer together.

The only similar type of crowd unity I can compare it to was the 1996 Kiss reunion tour. The difference is no one was singing “Strutter” as they spilled out into the streets Thursday night.

But unlike previous years, when folks had to rely on my reporting, this year we have an audio/visual component. Kerry shot some fun video of the festival, so be sure to check Idahostatesman.com over the next few days for that and some pictures.

I’ll try to keep the blog posts coming as best I can but there is lots of stuff to do here. I’ll be sure to write about a beer and food pairing seminar I plan to attend later today and will fill you guys in on what happens during the official judging sessions after watching some of that this morning — when I get a chance.

And be sure to check idahostatesman.com Saturday afternoon, when we will tell you if Kevin or Jake won any medals this year.