Yesterday AEG Live announced that there would not be a Mile High Music Festival in Denver this year.

Today we announce Mile High Music Festival will not happen in 2011. We are extremely proud of our past events and very grateful for all of the wonderful support of this community. We hope to find a way to bring this amazing event back.

They seem to be indicating that the reasons are all financial.  It seems to me that the festival should have easily been a money-maker with the large number of attendees and the high ticket prices.  But I think that they were expecting it to become even bigger than it was.  I don’t think there was a big out-of-town draw for the concert, though I did have a number of friends come in for it.  I think their problems lie in the fact that there was no nearby camping, which something that is expected of most other festivals.  People don’t want to spend a bunch of money for a hotel (especially one that isn’t within walking distance) after already spending a bunch on tickets.  I hope that they learn some lessons from this, if they do in fact try to bring the event back in the future.  I would definitely like for it to return but only if some needed improvements are addressed.

I brewed my latest batch of beer on January 2nd.  My friend Rob came over to learn all about brewing, and I actually helped him bottle his first batch this past Sunday.  I took home a bomber bottle of his American IPA that I hope to sample in a few weeks after I give it some time to carbonate.  Anyway, back to my own batch of beer, the third Pale Ale in a row.  I’d like to think that I’m slowly perfecting the style, but the truth is that I still have some ways to go.

Things started off well with a perfect 20 minute steeping of grains at 165 degrees.  That led to the hop boil, 40 minutes with both the 1 ounce of hops from the kit, plus another ounce of cascade hops that I added in.  Unfortunately we turned our attention away from the kettle for a few minutes, and bam!  Boil over.  Not only is this messy on the stove, it also hurts the starting gravity of the batch.  The recipe said that the beginning gravity should be 1.043 to 1.045, but mine was at 1.037.  Basically this means a lower alcohol content when it is all done.  I did hit the final gravity right on the money at 1.010, so at least that part went well.  The result is only 3.5% alcohol.

After I let it sit connected to CO2 for a couple of weeks, I have had a few small samples and I’m actually happy with the way the hops came through.  However, I am not happy with the maltiness.  I’m not sure if this can also be attributed to my boil over, or maybe the fact that I bought the grains for the recipe and maybe I made a bad decision.  Perhaps the beer will grow on me, after all I do have an entire keg of it to drink now.  I’m also curious to see what other people think of it.