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May 10, 2013

Freddie Kitson

2013 beer festivals in Wisconsin – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Nice weather and beer go together like, well, cheese and a burger.

Here are a few upcoming beer festivals – some of them extending the season, not that there’s anything wrong with that. You might want to put these on your calendar:

April 20: Dairy State Beer and Cheese Fest in Kenosha

May 3-12: Madison Craft Beer Week

May 31-June 2: Kohler Festival of Beer

June 1: 10th annual Beer Barons’ World of Beer Festival

June 15: Door County Beer Festival

June 15: Wisconsin Beer Lovers Festival

July 20: Milwaukee Firkin Fest in Cathedral Square

July 27: Milwaukee Brewfest

Aug. 10: Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison

Sept. 14: Great Lakes Brew Fest in Racine

Sept. 14: Thirsty Troll Brew Fest

Sept. 21: Egg Harbor Ale Fest

Oct. 26: Brew Fest GB in Green Bay

‘ Brew At The Zoo ‘ Beer Festivals for May Take on Miami , California and Memphis

Brew at the Zoo – Sequoia Park Zoo

Towards the middle of the month is when the fun is set to hit the zoo in Eureka, California, as the seventh annual event gets ready to do its thing. Music, dancing, food, and of course plenty of beer is on tap, as the event is set for Saturday, May 11 between 6 and 10pm. Tickets will cost you $30 per person, and youre welcomeand encouragedto bring along a designated driver for just $15 per person. Alaskan Brewing Company, Six Rivers Brewery, and Eel River Brewing are just a few of the breweries scheduled to be in attendance, so we think youll be in good hands.

Zoo Brew Memphis Zoo

Visit the hippos, the aquarium, penguins, and the pelicans over at the Memphis Zoo this month for their Zoo Brew event. Organizers are promising plenty of beers from here and thereas well as around the worldand theyll also be brining in plenty of live music and tasty food. The fun is set to kick off on Friday, May 24, as things run between 7pm and 10pm. Tickets will run you $40, but you might be able to save like $5 if you decide to sign up for a zoo membership. Dont worry if you miss this months events, as theyre planning to roll out the kegs at the end of the summer as wellon August 30.

[Photo: ilovememphis]

Beer bashes

Beer bashes

Can’t decide on a pub to properly ring in American Craft Beer Week? The best spot to sip may not be a bar at all. The Plaza Live (425 N. Bumby Ave., Orlando) offers a mighty tempting option in the “Celebrate American Craft Beer Week” festival on Wednesday, May 15. Even without the beer, this sounds like the best free show in town, with live music by Jeff White and reggae-rockers The Crazy Carls, plus food-truck fare from the likes of Bem Bom and Swede Dish from 5-9 p.m. Tickets ($10) get you a taste of the main event: 10 samples of select brews from Kona Brewing, Widmer Bros., Red Hook and Omission Beer. For details, head to plazaliveorlando.com.

For the terminally indecisive, downtown offers an expansive pub-crawl option in the Great Orlando Craft Beer Festival on Saturday, May 11. Register at Wall Street Plaza (25 Wall St., Orlando) starting at 2 p.m. and enjoy samples from a different brewery at each of 12 downtown venues from 3-7 p.m., including Lagunitas Brewing at Casey’s on Central, Dogfish Head at Frank Stein’s, Stone Brewing at Cleo’s Lounge and Abita Beer at Eternal Tap. The icing on the cake (or head on the beer, in this case) is a post-party at Hooch, where a raffle winner will score a trip to a beer lover’s mecca: The SAVOR craft beer and food fest in New York City. Tickets to the Great Orlando Craft Beer Festival are $20 advance or $30 at the gate, and participants must visit all 12 venues to be eligible for the raffle. For details, visit axismag.com.

Are There Too Many Beer Festivals in Chicago? – Chicago magazine

photo: Hilary Higgins / Redeye

The Chicago Beer Festival was held at Union Station on March 30.

Want to have one more round? There is another new beer festival in Chicago this year.

On Saturday, May 4, Dolphin (2200 N. Ashland Ave., 773-750-8090) will host the aptly named Tap, featuring neighborhood breweries Moonshine and Piece and craft brew havens like Map Room and Fatpour. A $35 ticket from Brown Paper Tickets ($45 at the door) buys ten 6-ounce pours, a commemorative glass, and food pairings.

Sounds fun—and kind of familiar. By our rough count, the city already has five big beer festivals, and we’ve heard of at least five new ones this year.

Chicago is nothing if not beer obsessed, and drinking all day in large groups is a time-honored tradition. But we got to wondering: Do we have too many beer festivals? Is such a thing possible?

Here are the results of a totally unscientific poll:

“I support beer festivals. But my favorable opinion has less to do with whether I enjoy them, and more that they are good for the regional craft beer ecosystem on the whole.

Last year, for example, I interviewed this guy named Rob Sama who was relaunching the “first” Chicago craft beer, Baderbrau, in time for the Hoptacular. Not only was his beer going to be poured at the event, but he was going to be there talking to people about his cryogenic yeast strains and formulations.

That sort of peek behind the curtain helps get fans behind regional products and creates a fanbase for them. Another case in point: Dark Lord Day, which is coming up at the end of the month. I mean, holy shit. That is one of the hottest tickets in town, and it’s not even in town. It’s in an industrial park in Indiana—but totally worth the trip.”

—Cassie Walker Burke, executive editor

“I am of the opinion that there is probably an overabundance of beer festivals, but I would prefer that situation to the risk of running out of beer completely.”

—Harry Sawyers, web editor

“I fear it’s becoming saturated. And they’re not cheap! I’m personally going to stick to the ones I know and love (namely, Beer Under Glass) and only add newbies to my repertoire if they’re really out of the ordinary.”

—Carly Boers, associate editor

“Obviously beerfests are popular. Hell, beer is popular. How many taps are there at Howells Hood? I just don’t get it. I am crazy bored by the whole subject.”

—Penny Pollack, dining editor

“I hate festivals in general, even when what they’re proffering are things that I tend to like (punk rock, beer, literature). They’re always hot and crowded and full of people who belong indoors. In other news, I hate rainbows and unicorns and happiness.”

—Jeff Ruby, dining critic

“I say yay to beerfests. There are never enough opportunities to be in a room (or street) where craft brews outpour Bud Light and MGD.”

—Jessica Nikolich, editorial intern

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On Tap: Two beer festivals hit NJ this May – The Star-Ledger

The Jersey Shore Brew Fest and the Garden State Beer Fest will be taking place in May.The Jersey Shore Brew Fest It’s officially May. The weather is warming up and the summer beers are being released. And what a better way to celebrate than with a beer festival?

Garden State Brewfest
On Saturday, May 11th, beer lovers can enjoy the Garden State Brewfest at the Mt. Carmel Society Fairgrounds in Berkeley Heights. Over 45 breweries will be represented between two tents (one VIP and one General Admission). Among them will be Jersey favorites Carton, Kane, River Horse, Bolero Snort, NJ Beer Co., East Coast, Trap Rock, Climax, Cricket Hill and Tuckahoe, alongside out-of-staters Weyerbacher, Yards, Ommegang, Troegs, Sly Fox, Philadelphia Brewing Co., Fegley’s, Blue Point, Voodoo, Sixpoint, Keegan, Defiant, Ruckus, Captain Lawrence and more. The VIP tent will include “strange brews” alongside beer-food pairings.

In addition to tons of great beer, two bands, Walkin’ the Boulevard and Men of Horses will be providing live music.

This year, the brewfest will be raising funds for Restore the Shore. It will also be holding a food drive for the Community Food Bank of NJ.

Tickets can be bought on their website. VIP tickets are available for $107 each, GA for $50 each, and DD tickets for $9.99.

Jersey Shore Beer Fest
A week later, on Saturday, May 18th, The Headliner in Neptune will host the Jersey Shore Beer Fest. The Headliner, which was ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, will be reopening just in time for the beer fest with new indoor and outdoor bars, new floors, a new kitchen, and new beach volleyball courts.

The event will feature more than 30 craft breweries and will benefit the Richard S. Bascom Scholarship Fund. Breweries will include locals like Flying Fish, Carton, Cricket Hill, Tuckahoe and East Coast, with others including Brooklyn, Blue Point, Yards, Stone, Smuttynose, Ommegang, Ithica, and more. There will also be a specialty bar featuring wheat and fruit beers and an IPA Happy Hour bar. Local food from Fins Tacos and The Happy Clam will also be available at the event.

Tickets are $49 for GA and $15 for Designated Drivers. Tickets include a 5 oz tasting glass for any 2 oz beer samples (for GA tickets) or non-alcoholic drinks (DD tickets) and a meal voucher. Tickets can be purchased through event producers BeerHeads.com.

Both events look like great ways to start off the summer beer season. If you’re able to go to either, enjoy!

Colorado’s beer festivals are becoming victims of their own success

Craft-beer geeks in Colorado are used to good news: more breweries, new beers and the continued growth of an industry that makes most Coloradans proud, happy and pleasantly buzzed. But for anyone who likes going to beer fests — and the season kicks off this week with the South Denver Beer Festival, at Littleton’s Clement Park — there were some news items last week that reminded people how craft beer’s popularity can also make it a pain.

For starters, the Boulder-based Brewers Association, which hosts the annual Great American Beer Festival in Denver, announced that ticket prices will be $75 this year, up $10 from 2012 — and $20 higher than they were in 2010.

That price increase would be acceptable for most people if it meant that the tickets were easier to come by, but more than likely, they will sell out in minutes, if not seconds, when they go on sale (sometime this summer), just as they did last year. In fact, the Brewers Association had to navigate a bit of a PR mess in 2012 when many tickets ended up in the hands of scalpers, leaving some longtime GABF-goers out of luck. A few angry beer geeks blamed Ticketmaster for the situation and suggested that the Brewers Association come up with another way to sell tickets — but the organization will return to Ticketmaster this year for the festival, which takes place October 10-12.

But GABF isn’t the only tough ticket in town. Avery Brewing’s fourth annual Boulder SourFest also sold out in seconds on April 24. One of the premier Colorado beer festivals, SourFest has to be an exclusive event, because the featured style — the sour and wild ales that are brewed with brettanomyces yeast and various bacterias — is difficult and time-consuming to make, and therefore in short supply. As a result, Avery only releases 400 tickets. Although the fest is amazing, it typically generates bad publicity — along with nice hype for the brewery because of the ticket limit.

“We just kind of prepare ourselves for it each year,” says Avery spokesman Joe Osborne. “We know we’ll get the most hate mail about this, and we had many passionate arguments internally on how to handle this, but we will feel like the fairest way to do it is online, because people come from all over the country to attend.”

The third piece of bad news for beer-fest fans affects the aforementioned South Denver Beer Fest, a brand-new festival that takes place May 4-5. Alongside dozens of well-known and well-loved existing breweries, the organizers had originally intended to include beers from at least ten different breweries-in-planning — companies that were experimenting with their recipes but hadn’t yet opened for business. To keep from violating any state liquor laws, however, these would-be breweries were going to be grouped in an area designated for home brewers. But late last week, the Colorado Department of Revenue, which handles liquor licenses, told fest organizers Jeremy Hutaff and Mike Burns that the breweries-in-planning could be jeopardizing their shot at getting a liquor license if they participated.

The problem, says department spokeswoman Ro Silva, is a rule that limits home brewers to serving their beer only at contests, and then only to judges and participants in those contests. The statute also prevents home brews from being sold to or consumed by the general public. “So they could be charged with selling without a license, which could affect their applications,” Silva says.

The call was frustrating for Hutaff, who thought he had cleared the arrangement with the department’s Liquor and Tobacco Enforcement Division. “They changed their mind,” he says. “And we don’t want to risk the future of any of these breweries or put anyone in jeopardy.” As a result, the home-brew competition won’t be held, and the general public won’t get to try out the beers from these would-be brewers. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to do it next year,” Hutaff says.

‘Brew At The Zoo’ Beer Festivals for May Take on Miami, California and Memphis

Brew at the Zoo – Sequoia Park Zoo

Towards the middle of the month is when the fun is set to hit the zoo in Eureka, California, as the seventh annual event gets ready to do its thing. Music, dancing, food, and of course plenty of beer is on tap, as the event is set for Saturday, May 11 between 6 and 10pm. Tickets will cost you $30 per person, and youre welcomeand encouragedto bring along a designated driver for just $15 per person. Alaskan Brewing Company, Six Rivers Brewery, and Eel River Brewing are just a few of the breweries scheduled to be in attendance, so we think youll be in good hands.

Zoo Brew Memphis Zoo

Visit the hippos, the aquarium, penguins, and the pelicans over at the Memphis Zoo this month for their Zoo Brew event. Organizers are promising plenty of beers from here and thereas well as around the worldand theyll also be brining in plenty of live music and tasty food. The fun is set to kick off on Friday, May 24, as things run between 7pm and 10pm. Tickets will run you $40, but you might be able to save like $5 if you decide to sign up for a zoo membership. Dont worry if you miss this months events, as theyre planning to roll out the kegs at the end of the summer as wellon August 30.

[Photo: ilovememphis]

Perfect pints: The best British beer and cider festivals this summer

There couldn’t be a better way to spend a warm weekend (they’re coming!) than heading to one of the UK’s best beer festivals to spend a couple of days tasting and note-taking or chatting and chugging (depending on what kind of beer drinker you are).

So check the weather forecast and get out there to see a new corner of the country, listen to some great live music and sample some seriously tasty brews.

Great Welsh Beer and Cider Festival

When: June 6-8

This is an absolute behemoth of a beer fest, taking over the whole of Cardiff’s Motorpoint Arena and including both Welsh and foreign beers, plus ciders and perries. Live music comes from rock and R’n’B covers band Jumpin’ Jimmy and The Nice Guys and Here Be Dragons, a wild Celtic band.

Tipples: You’ll be spoilt for choice with Welsh ales from Brecon Brewing, the Celt Experience and quirky South Wales microbrewery Tiny Rebel, plus plenty more.

Stomach liners: Martin’s Jerked Meats, which sells hand-made jerky made with ales from Otley, Kingstone and Brecon. Feeling adventurous? Taste Merry Berry Truffles, which they say are perfect for pairing with beers and ciders.

More info: gwbcf.org.uk

FyneFest

When: June 14-16

This one could get messy, as it’s a three-day camping festival by Loch Fyne, about an hour’s drive from Glasgow. Along with the beer drinking, there’s locally sourced food to get stuck into and lots of live music. Bombskare, an Edinburgh-based ska band are playing and so are Shooglenifty, who will be letting rip with their techno-meets-Scottish-folk tunes.

Tipples: The beer list is yet to be confirmed, but since the festival is run by Fyne Ales, we’d recommend you keep your eyes peeled for their Piper Gold. This bitter pale ale won a Camra’s Champion Beer of Britain bronze award, and is described as “well bittered but balanced with a long dry finish”. They’re also doubling their cider selection.

Stomach liners: Seafood from Loch Fyne Oyster’s, venison burgers, sausage rolls and a hog roast will be among the fodder on offer.

More info: fynefest.com

Drink Beer And Frolic With The Animals At Lincoln Park Zoo

There are so many craft beer festivals going on right now that Chicago Magazine felt the need to ask if there are “too many beer festivals in Chicago?” It’s possible that the market is a bit saturated, which is why the only festivals that get our attention anymore have some sort of hook. Hosting your event at Lincoln Park Zoo is just that sort of hook.

LivingSocial is hosting a BeerFest (winner of the most generic name ever award) on June 15. In addition to 60 different craft brews, they will be bringing in food trucks, live entertainment and games. Plus, of course, access to the zoo and the animal houses on a beautiful summer evening.

A $39 ticket gets you 3 oz. pours of all the beers and access to the event. If you’re a high-roller, a $59 VIP ticket gets you access to a special balcony and exclusive tasting of “small barrel” beers. Either way, it’s a good deal. Tickets are available here. Checkout the promo below for more.

Hop On Over to Two Beer Festivals This Weekend

global taphouse.jpg image viaIt seems that once spring arrives, it’s time to bust out some brews. And we are so down with that.

This Saturday, April 27, Global Brew Tap House Lounge (112 South Buchanan Street Suite 1, Edwardsville; 618-307-5858) will host the Edwardsville Spring Beer Festival and Ferguson Brewing Company (418 S. Florissant Road, Ferguson; 314-521-2220) will celebrate its second annual Brewfest.

The Edwardsville Spring Beer Festival will run from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. in Edwardsville City Park, and admission is free. Ferguson Brewfest will run from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m., so really you have no excuse not to attend both.

After the response to the Edwardsville Fall Beer Festival last November was so outstanding, Laura High, co-owner of Global Brew Tap House Lounge, decided to make it a biannual event.

“The response has been so positive,” High says. “Last year when we were planning, we had no idea what the response would be. Our goal was 300 people, and we had more than 1,500 in the first two hours. This year we’re planning on a lot of people. We’re doubling everything — all the volunteers, all the food and all the beer — this year.”

The festival is free, but you can buy beer tickets to taste beers from twenty different craft breweries from across the U.S. Local breweries will also have selections there, of course. Edwardsville restaurants Bella Milano, the Cup, Cleveland-Heath, Bigelo’s Bistro, 222 Artisan Bakery and Craft Chophouse will provide food for the event, but make sure you have cash on hand for them.

global brew.jpg image viaA portion of the proceeds from all food and drink sales will go to Hope Animal Rescues, an Illinois-based no-kill shelter.

“We have lots of different passions,” High says, “so we’re trying to spread the love around. We’re all pet lovers, and it’s really great when you can help out a cause that’s near and dear to your heart.”

Hope Animal Rescues will have dogs at the event, and visitors can apply to be fosters or to adopt. No dogs will be adopted from the event, as Hope likes to do thorough background checks for its pooches, but dogs make any event more fun.

High anticipates the lovely weather holding out for the event, but, she says, “if it’s not gorgeous weather, we’re just gonna get wet.” As long as there’s beer, man.

Global Brew Tap House Lounge opened in Edwardsville two years ago, and High and her business partners (husband Ryan High and friend Ryan Lowe — no joke!) recently opened another branch in O’Fallon. The bar has 50 beers on tap and another 200 in bottles, as well as a select stock of wine.

Global Brew also has a mobile brew van, which High describes as “the coolest ice-cream truck known to man.” It’s essentially a refrigerated truck with taps, so yeah, coolest ice-cream truck ever.

Location Info

Venue

Map

Ferguson Brewing Company

418 S. Florissant Road, Ferguson, MO

Category: Restaurant

Show additional locations »

Edwardsville City Park

112 S. Kansas St., Edwardsville, IL

Category: General

2013 beer festivals in Wisconsin – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Recommended Reading

‘ Brew At The Zoo ‘ Beer Festivals for May Take on Miami , California and Memphis

Brew at the Zoo – Sequoia Park Zoo

Zoo Brew Memphis Zoo

Recommended Reading

Beer bashes

Recommended Reading

Are There Too Many Beer Festivals in Chicago? – Chicago magazine

Recommended Reading

On Tap: Two beer festivals hit NJ this May – The Star-Ledger

Recommended Reading

Colorado’s beer festivals are becoming victims of their own success

Recommended Reading

‘Brew At The Zoo’ Beer Festivals for May Take on Miami, California and Memphis

Brew at the Zoo – Sequoia Park Zoo

Zoo Brew Memphis Zoo

Recommended Reading

Perfect pints: The best British beer and cider festivals this summer

Great Welsh Beer and Cider Festival

FyneFest

Recommended Reading

Drink Beer And Frolic With The Animals At Lincoln Park Zoo

Recommended Reading

Hop On Over to Two Beer Festivals This Weekend

Location Info

Venue

Map

Ferguson Brewing Company

Edwardsville City Park

Recommended Reading

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