I’ve yet to leave the state of Michigan for a beer festival – crazy I know – until last weekend. We loaded up my car, and drove 800 miles to Boston for the Beer Advocate 4th annual American Craft Beer Festival. We had a great weekend of sight seeing, visiting Boston Gardens, Cheers, The North End, taking a Charles River boat cruise to see Harvard and MIT, and enjoying a city with public transportation.
On Saturday afternoon, we went to the second of three sessions for the ACBF at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston to sample over 400 beers from 100 different breweries. The second session had sold out selling over 5,000 tickets! I was worried that the crowds would be so enormous that it would be hard to taste the beer, but the event was organized really well. There were a ton of vendors, and a lot of space.
Each brewery had their own booth, much like a trade show expo floor for business conferences. It seemed like a lot of the booths had local volunteers doing the 2 oz pours, and not actual brewery owners and representatives. This was disappointing, as some weren’t very knowledgeable about what they were pouring, and I had my heart set on meeting Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head. I did however get to meet this guy.
And this guy.
And this guy.
Joe Hakim from The Hungry Dudes suggested that I find the booth for Surly Brewing out of Minnesota. He was right in that they had some outstanding brews. They also had one of the longest lines, and were out of many things by the time we got there.
Some of the big dogs were there, like Stone, Dogfish Head, Harpoon, Goose Island, and Sierra Nevada. But a lot of the vendors were from New England, with only a few from out west and other states. The only Michigan brewery present was Atwater. We of course stopped by to say hello.
They did have a huge variety of great tasting beers, with over 400 to choose from. I did notice however, that there weren’t a lot of experimental fun beers we have at the Michigan festivals. Like Uber Goober from Shorts, or 440 Pepper Smoker from Original Gravity. The craziest thing I saw was a Mango Ale from the Virgin Islands.
IPAs were heavily present, as well as Barleywines and Imperial Stouts. I really enjoyed some of the organic beers from Wolaver’s and Peak Organic. My favorite by far, oddly enough was a pumpkin beer from Shipyard Brewing Company in Maine. Strangely out of season, but absolutely the best pumpkin beer I’ve ever had. The Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin was only available for a little while as word spread of how good it was. We went back for seconds but it was already gone.
We had an amazing time in Boston and at the festival. I even met Jason and Todd who founded Beer Advocate in 1996. Hats of to them for a great job putting the festival together. I think that I will continue to venture outside the state for these fun and tasty travels – next stop – Great American Beer Festival in Denver!
