A beer fest is a great place to try new beers without having to worry. They give you a small tasting glass. If you don't like it, you haven't wasted that many calories. However, if you do love it, you can then add that beer to your next shopping list! Here is Dave showing off his new tasting glass.
We decided to purchase VIP tickets which gave us a chance to get a one hour start on the general admission folks. It also included a full BBQ lunch, so it was well worth the added bucks. Last but not least, the VIPs got first crack at the special limited edition bottles.
We started with the VIP beers, which were arrayed on tables from light to dark styles. Each time we approached the table, we got two different beers. We probably sampled about 14 different offerings before we started running into the really hoppy and really sour beers. Here are some of the honorable mentions: Dark Horse - Plead the 5th Imperial Stout; Destihl - Clarice Congnac; Evolution- ZL Nouveau; Fegley's - Brandy Barrel Aged Venomous; Fish - The Hobbit Series - Bolg Tripel; Fuller - Vintage; Heretic - Chocolate Hazelnut Porter.
Having satisfied our curiosity at the bottle table, it was time to circle the various tents and meet the breweries. Many of the "pourers" are actually volunteers from the local community. Here's a photo of two of the pourers. We memorialized the pourers in the photo below from Great Swamp Brewing in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, because we really liked their Amaretto Stout. Great Swamp Brewing is about to open, but if their Amaretto Stout is any indication, they are going to be a brewery to watch!
All the proceeds from the event go to a number of Lansdale charities. The list is too long to print, so here is the link. So, we get to eat and drink and support really good causes. What's not to like about this beer fest!
You can tell Dave is fully recovered from his surgery. In the photo above, he is about to get some Honey Berry Happiness from a Hooker - Thomas Hooker Brewery that is. (At least the guy below thought my joke was funny!)
We took a few minutes out from sampling to dig into the BBQ. It was pretty rainy, so everyone had to huddle together under the big tents.
The rain didn't dampen the spirits of the crowd, however. Our friends at Penn Brewery made a delicious Chocolate Meltdown Stout. This is definitely going on the shopping list!
With hundreds of breweries in the area, it can be difficult to come up with a unique name. What's not to love about Evil Genius (shown below), especially when they brew up a particularly yummy Pineapple Heffeweizen - tropical summer goodness!
Before we knew it, it was time for the general admission folks to join the party. There were a LOT of them:
Although we concentrated our initial efforts on the VIP beers, we had time to circulate to all the other tables, and we found a lot of the non-VIP beers we liked, too! There were many of them we hadn't tasted before. Two of the honorable mentions from the brewer tables are Greak Lakes - Chocolate Raspberry Porter and Innis & Gunn - Scottish Porter.
We're really disappointed about the timing of this beer fest, because, while we're about to move to Cooperstown, New http://brew-crew.com/York, which is just a short drive from Oliver's Brew Crew in Albany, where we normally can pick up individual bottles of just about any beer we can imagine - this time, our next move will be on to Canada, and we're going to be strictly limited in the amount of beer we can bring into that country. Foiled! But we'll keep track of the best beers we tasted here in Lansdale and find a way to pick some up when we return to the States this fall.
In the meantime, stay thirsty, my friends!
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