People love to drink their craft beer, even in a crap economy — 2009 marks at least the third year in a row the Great American Beer Festival sold out in advance.

Considering the tickets are $55 each for the cheapest sessions and hotel rooms in Denver are expensive, I was wondering if the economy would keep people away from the GABF this year. The answer? No.

So if any of you guys were planning on making a last second decision to go to the GABF, you are out of luck. Plan for next year, when the biggest and best American beer festival returns to Denver on Sept. 16-18, 2010.

This year’s GABF is going to be the biggest ever — in crowd size ( about 49,000 people over four sessions), number of breweries competing (495), and beers to taste on the floor (2,100).

Fifty one of those 495 breweries are going to be at the GABF for the first time — including Boise’s own TableRock Brewpub.

I can’t wait to go. This is my fourth trip to the festival, and every year it gets bigger and better. At least six people I know of from the Boise area are going — and that is not including the guys from TableRock, The Ram and Boise homebrew champ Travis Schaff.

I am going to be blogging and Tweeting (that means posting updates on Twitter at http://twitter.com/patrickorr ) to the best of my ability on Sept. 25 and 26 from Denver.

If you are going this year, the GABF official Website has the brewery map available for download and a new social networking site for people who want to:

* View an interactive map of the festival.
* Review details about breweries and events.
* View brewery listings by company name, booth numbers, or recently updated profiles
* Sort events by popularity, time, and name. Registered users can indicate which events they are attending.