Winner update: Congrats to evamarie.perron, who came the closest with her guess of 1,500 pints. The actual answer is 1,571 pints.
Craft brews were the big draw at last month's Great American Beer Festival, but a portion of the beer bonanza was also devoted to beer-and-food pairings, which, in the last few years, have become more and more frequent, and while there are a fair share of cynic oenophiles who will insist that wine -- not beer -- is the ideal accompaniment to food beyond pretzels and wieners, beer geeks are telling another story.