Each morning I would roll out of bed and raise the hotel window shades. I wanted to see the distant Rockies. Would they be poking through a cloudy veil, or glowing in the morning sun? One day, my eyes drifted six stories below.

A white dumpster, bleeding rust, designed to hold the contents of a cluttered garage, sat in the street. It was nearly 25 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 4 and half feet tall. I couldn’t decipher the contents, but they shimmered in the sun.

Down on the street, a cloud of stale beer hung in the air. Bottles were piled nearly three feet high and their competition labels were still intact. 1,403 breweries submitted 4,754 beers to the World Beer Cup competition. A small platoon of judges, 219 from 31 countries, spent days deciphering them inside the Hyatt hotel.