Alaska beer festival marks a decade: for $28, attendees get to taste from more than 200 different beers and barley wines.

• Author: Pilkington, Steve
• Position: Alaska This Month - Great Alaska Beer and Barley Wine Festival

It's known as zymurgy. It can seem simple or extremely complex, depending upon how far you are willing--or able--to delve. Zymurgy, is the branch of chemistry concerned with fermentation. In simple terms, give the right yeast some water, a batch of special sugars, a good environment and nature takes its course. The yeast's labors produce carbon dioxide and alcohol-beer. As with so many things in life, there really is much more to it than that.

Long ago, before fermentation was understood, brewers called the mysterious process "God is good." Zymurgists have learned much since then. When practiced with care and a little common sense, the product can be magical.

This is where the annual Great Alaska Beer & Barley Wine Festival enters the picture. January is becoming a special month for beer in Alaska. This year, the festival takes place Jan. 14-15 at the William A. Egan Civic & Convention Center in Anchorage. For the past 10 years, brewers have brought their wares before judges and the public to let them sample the best of their brews, while the proceeds benefit the American Diabetes Association.

"This year, we are really working hard on getting the winning breweries from the beer festival in Denver," said Annie Chavez of Aurora Productions Inc., the group behind the Anchorage festival. Chavez said almost all of the Alaska breweries and many from the 23rd Annual Great American Beer Festival, which took place in Denver last October, have agreed to be here for professional judging. Alaska breweries are making names far and wide for brewing know-how and grabbed four medals at the Denver event. Glacier Brewhouse took a gold medal at the American festival for its Big Woody Barleywine, which was a winner as well at last year's Great Alaska Beer & Barley Wine Festival.

Chavez said organizers expect around 60 breweries to be present and more than 200 individual beers and barley...