It’s amazing what some people will do for fun. Some run marathons, some get shot with stingy little paintballs, some even suspend themselves from sharp hooks pushed through the bleeding flesh of their own backs.Bruce and I dispense beer at beer festivals.

This weekend found us in the teeming metropolis of Hunter, New York, for Tap NY, the state’s premier beer festival, and due to its proximity to the Tri-State area, one of the most attended. Dozens of breweries from all over New York, New Jersey and Canada offered up their finest for the sampling pleasure of the masses.

For the first day, the masses didn’t seem overly interested in the finest. Maybe the most alcoholically strong, but subtle flavor and aroma characteristics did not seem to be a top priority for many. One poor kid (I’m guessing he was about 21 by the way he couldn’t stand up) managed to get himself literally covered in a complex, hoppy yet smokey carmel-tinged Ithaca Ten, which dripped sadly off the brim of his baseball cap onto the back of his right shoulder as a big brown stain spread across his Abercrombie logo. Even with the younger crowd though, drink-addled outbursts seemed to be kept to a minimum. I saw no violence, no vomit. Oh well, you can’t have everything.

Give me your huddled masses waiting to be drunk

No, seriously, it’s a tribute to the festival organizers and the Hunter Mountain staff that things went so smoothly. This is a long-standing and well-run festival, and every effort is made to accommodate the brewers. Festival Co-Founder Nat Collins stood on his head to make sure that every exhibitor had a problem-free festival. The guy did laps the whole time; it looked exhausting.

 Festival co-founder Nat Collins

We basically poured nonstop for four hours, running out of the Rohrbach Bluebeary ale on the first day, and growing concerned that we didn’t bring enough beer to last the entirety of the two-day event. You can only fit four kegs in the back of a Honda Element.

The night was spent dodging creepy twin toddlers in the hallway at an anachronistic borscht-belt era resort called the Villa Vosilla, and drinking the neighboring O’Neil’s Pub, which had the common decency to feature one of our favorite beers, Roosterfish Nut Brown Ale, on draft. This went over particularly well considering we were drinking with Jordan Sunseri, one of the Roosterfish brewers.

The outside breweries prep for Sunday

As is the norm at these festivals, the Sunday crowd was thinner in number, older, and generally more interested in the beer.

The day kicked of with the chick from the Ale Street News booth apologizing profusely for how she acted while partying the previous night, which must have been terrible because we never laid eyes on her. But being magnanimous, I offered my forgiveness with a stern admonishment not to let it happen again.

We cruised through the Sunday crowd with relative ease, with plenty of sampling opportunities for the two of us. My favorites: Sixpoint Gorilla Warfare, Southampton Secret Ale, and Chelsea Cream Stout. We also met a bunch of cool brewing guys from Sixpoint, Keegan and others. This is the part I like best about working beer festivals: making new friends, talking beer and coming away a bit envious that I don’t work among the big tanks myself.

Lake Placid Maibock: a malty standout 

After the last gasp of foam spurted from our final keg, we packed up and hauled ass through the backest of central New York State roads, to the Thruway and over to Rochester’s Tap and Mallet, where we shared a couple pints with Rochester radio dj Dem Jones. A great end to a great festival.

Jeff from Ithaca Brewing with his prize, apparently some subs. 

Congratulations to all the breweries that won prizes. And a special shout-out to Jeff and the guys from the Ithaca Brewing Company who won Best New York State Craft Brewery. We’ll see you at Hunter Mountain next year.

-Mark

The beer festival season in the Northeast has begun.

Beer festivals are the best conventions in the world. Where else can you get such a diverse range of good beers under one roof, and unlimited samples of anything you’d like? Plus, you can buy all sorts of brewery-related crap. It’s enough to make a beer lover giddy.

But there’s a fine line between enjoying an evening’s sampling and being a drunken or inconsiderate idiot. Out of concern for our Beercraft readership, we’d like to offer a quick guide to staying on the correct side of the fence, in good spirits, and out of the paddy wagon.

1. Arrive early to avoid the rush.

Unlike fancy-dress parties, there is no fashionably late when it comes to a brewfest. Especially if you’re really into craft beer. Often, a festival will be divided into two sessions: an afternoon and an evening pour. Plan on attending the first session. The crowds will be lighter, giving you more opportunity to talk to the people who make the beer. your neighbors will also be significantly less drunk, rowdy, and obnoxious than the folks in second-session crowd, many of whom see the festival as more of a giant happy hour/frat party than anything else.

The other benefit to a first-session arrival is an assurance of beer. Brewers and brewers’ reps can only bring so much; four half-barrels is a common amount. When that dries up, they’re gone and you’re out of luck. So if you’re dying for a taste of that Stone Ruination IPA or Three Floyds, be the earlier bird.

If the beer festival you’re attending is a one session event, the same rules apply. If the thing starts at 5, be there at 4:30 and avoid the inevitable mad crush of thirsty humanity.

2. Little glasses add up.

You ever hear of the century club? That’s the old college drinking game where you drink a shot per minute for 100 minutes. On the surface, this doesn’t sound so hard, but when you do the math you realize the insane amount of alcohol and small amount of time involved.

Beer sample glasses are usually 2 ounces. If you’ve dillegently followed rule #1, you’re at the festival before the lines have formed, giving you quick access to hundreds of beers. Don’t succumb to temptation and slam down beer after beer. In your rush to try them all, your rate of consumption will increase, defeating the purpose of “tasting” in the first place. Then, after a while, your pants will likely come off, or you’ll knock, some brewer’s pouring station over. Or you’ll insult some biker dude, or something. However your demise comes, it will be quick and sure.

You can’t try all the beers at most one-day brewer’s festivals, so be smart about it. Go to the event website ahead of time and get a list of who’s participating, then go to a beer rating site such as Beer Advocate or Ratebeer and figure out which ones you really want to try (but leave some room for random tastings and experimentation). With this approach, you’ll get the most out of the event without murdering your liver, and you won’t walk away feeling you didn’t get your money’s worth.

3. Water is your friend

A good beer festival will make water available, hopefully for free but usually for sale. Don’t be a cheapskate. Buy a couple bottles of water. Taking frequent water breaks will extend your tasting time and cleanse your palate for the next beer. Oh, and for chrissake, eat something before the festival.

4. Taste in the right order

This can be a tough guideline to follow, since the brewery booths aren’t arranged in this way, nor are their individual taps. But if you drink a tonsil-stranglingly bitter double IPA, you won’t be able to taste anything in that wheat beer the next tap over. The bitterness will steamroll all over it. Again, this is where your friend H2O comes into play. rinse big beers off your palate with a couple swigs of water before progressing to gentler styles.

When tasting a range from one brewery, go from light to heavy. Start with their wheat beers, pilsners, and lagers. Move up to brown and pale ales, and hit the IPAs, stouts, and anything with the words “Imperial” or “Double” last. If in doubt, ask the brewer or brewer’s rep (not the likely clueless volunteer pourer) what order he or she suggests.

5. Don’t be afraid to take notes

If you’re into the beer fest, chances are you’ll be into a bar or beer store at a later time. By keeping brief tasting notes on the beers you really dug, you’ll increase your ensure a great beer experience when you hit the town. After a long afternoon’s tasting, it’s not always easy to remember that first beer you tried when you walked in. Swallow your pride, be a dork, and jot shit down.

Some beer festivals actually provide notepads for this purpose, but just bring an assignment pad, or something. Or surreptitiously enter the info in to the “notes” function of your cell phone. You could be texting a supermodel, for all the casual observer can tell.

There you go. Five simple tips to maximize your enjoyment of any brewer’s fest, and not be an asshole in the process. Beer is a great thing, and you’ll find the people who make it are friendly and passionate about what they do. The fruits of their labor deserve proper appreciation.

-Mark

Bruce and I will be heading up I-90 to Syracuse this Saturday to man the Rohrbach Brewing Company stand at the Central New York Brewers’ Fest.

This is the first craft beer festival of the year, and I’m excited as hell to get back into the swing of things. It’s really fun to share and talk about good beer with festival attendees, not to mention with the brewers and representatives from craft breweries throughout the Northeast.

The thing takes place at the New York State Fairgrounds. Admission is $25 in advance, $30 at the door. They give you a little cup and you just go around trying as much beer as is physically or mentally possible. Hope to see you there.

-Mark

…and into the ski lodge. Bruce and I will once again be working the Rohrbach Brewing Company booth this Saturday at the Holiday Valley Beer and Wine Festival, at Elicottville, NY’s Holiday Valley Ski Resort.

We had a blast last April, when we did Holiday Valley’s Rites of Spring festival. This one should be bigger and badder. We will try to conduct ourselves with class and decorum, but we will probably fail.

-Mark

“I wish they had as much respect for beer in Belgium as they do here in America.” Said Gumer Santos in pleasantly accented English. As Head Brewer for Belgium’s Rochefort Trappist Brewery, Santos addressed us as part of a four-expert panel on Belgian beer.

Rochefort’s Gumer Santos, being affable

The fact that a Belgian brewer had flown across the ocean to join us, and the fact that there was an actual panel discussion at all, separated the Beer Advocate Belgian Beer Festival from every other beer fest I’ve worked or attended. Normally, this type of event can be counted on to do three things: give regional brewers a chance to demo their products, (ideally) make a profit for the host, and get frat boys trashed. The BA fest offered a refreshing dose of actual beer education that backed up the mantra of Beer Advocate founders Jason and Todd Alstrom: Respect Beer.

The Alstroms, waffling for the camera

The event hall is very good for beer festivals: a cavernous, circular room originally built to house a giant wraparound mural of the Battle of Gettysburg. Smart limitation of ticket sales allowed a still considerable throng easy access to seating, rest rooms, and the brewers’ tables. At no time did the brewers seem crushed under the sampler glass-waving press of humanity evident at many beer festivals. They had time to talk about their beers.

And what a lineup of beers! Belgians like Rochefort and Rodenbach were joined by some of the finest American interpretations of Belgian styles. Veritas 001 from California’s Lost Abbey was particularly impressive, leaving me rueful that it’s impossible to find in the beer mecca that is Rochester, New York.

sampling in the Cyclorama

But what impressed the most was the panel discussion. Santos was joined by Brewery Ommegang brewmaster Randy Thiel, Lost Abbey honcho Tomme Arthur. Dan Shelton of Shelton Brothers Distributing and Merchant du Vin’s Joe Lipa also sat on the panel. Some people would question my desire to sit there and let people drone on about making and selling beer with 25 breweries offering samples in the next room, but it was an enlightening, encouraging discussion, reaffirming that some of the top people responsible for the production an d sale of great beer shared my thoughts and ideas. Plus, some attractive volunteer chick kept bringing samples of Cantillon to my seat.

L-R: Joe Lipa, Gumer Santos, Randy Thiel, Tomme Arthur and Dan Shelton

I walked away impressed by the brewers’ commitment, not just to mimic a generic archetypal Belgian style, but to research the traditions and unique qualities of Belgium’s beers, incorporating their discoveries into their own brewing. Equally impressive (and a bit unexpected) was the passion the specialty distributors showed toward Belgian beer. It’s not just a numbers game; these guys are disciples, and that’s encouraging.

Belgium might be a dwindling market for its own specialty beer, and neighboring companies might be too myopically immersed in their own beer cultures to care, but the USA is the great savior, and vehicle of advancement, for these wonderful beer styles. Thanks to events like the BA Belgian Beer Festival, I can be confident that Americans’ knowledge and selection of Belgian beers can only grow.

-Mark

I had a great time in Boston at this festival. I learned a lot, got to hear the thoughts of key industry people, and drank a bunch of Belgian beer. We also roped the Head Brewer of Otter Creek into a mini pubcrawl which culminated in copious amounts of Murphy’s Stout.

The full writeup will be posted tomorrow. There’s a lot of material and I’m a bit limited on time.

-Mark

I’ll be heading on down to Boston this coming weekend for the Beer Advocate Belgian Beer Fest. It sounds like a lot of fun. My only reservation being the thousands of insufferable Red Sox fans strutting about, now that they’ve had their latest Hallmark moment. Maybe they’ll be in Colorado that weekend.

Anyway, the festival looks fantastic. We’ll be attending the first session, then hitting finer purveyors of beer around the city. I’m open to any recommendations for great beer bars.

-Mark

I can’t stress it enough. I am all about Oktoberfest. I was raised by a Bavarian mother. Hell, until I was ten, I thought the German word for ‘four’ was ‘G’suffa!’ I love both the festival and the festival’s beer.

One great thing about Oktoberfest is its influence on craft beer here in the USA. Each fall, a flood of Munich-inspired malty wonderfulness gushes forth from breweries all across the country. Some are very traditional, striving to match the Munich greats as closely as possible. Others benefit from the iconoclasm for which American craft brewers are becoming famous, resulting in beers that, while identifiable as Oktoberfest beers, take on characteristics all their own.

There are simply too many for one beer guy to try them all. Here are a couple favorites you can find on draft, in the Northeast, anyway:

Victory Festbier
Victory Brewing Company, Downingtown, PA
Festbier pays homage to the great brewing houses of Munich. It’s heavy on the malt, with noticeable caramel flavor, but not cloying. I got a touch of dryness in the finish, but very minor, certainly not verging on bitterness. This copper-colored, lightly foamy brew offers a substantial body without being too heavy. You can enjoy glass after glass, and isn’t that what a festival beer is for?

Samuel Adams Oktoberfest
Boston Beer Company, Boston, MA
Sam Adam’s mainline lager is a bit lacking (although it’s getting better), but they pull out the stops for this beer. Amber colored and luscious, Sam’s interpretation of Octoberfest beer has a toasty “liquid bread” quality imparted by the malt. It’s also slightly sweeter than the German Oktoberfest beers I’ve had. There’s enough of an alcoholic bite for this beer to match well with the cooling autumn air. Sam Adams’ excellent distribution means you can get a case of this practically anywhere where the majority of homes don’t have wheels. It’s a great grab to take to a Halloween party.

Saranac Octoberfest
F.X. Matt Brewery, Utica, NY
My wife and I stayed in and watched the movie Beerfest the other evening. I hadn’t intended to drink anything that night, but it proved impossible to watch without pounding beers. 7 Saranac Octoberfests later, the Americans had won.

I find Saranac Octoberfest a bit crisper and lighter in malt character than its counterparts from Victory and Sam Adams. You get some clove-like flavors along with the expected caramel. You also get a noticeably lighter body than the aforementioned, as well as a little more hop bitterness in the finish.

Incidentally, Hunahpu from the excellent homebrewing blog “The All-Grain Evangelist,” did not like the movie Beerfest as much as I did. What can I say? I love it when anyone takes the piss out of the Germans.

-Mark

Right, I’m back and sufficiently recovered to detail to you, dear reader, the happenings of this beer festival from the heart of the Finger Lakes.

Ithaca’s a weird town- a melange of rich, haughty legacy students, geeky post-grads, wannabe hippie artists, and grumpy working class townies. No group really seems to get along with the other, and the hippies tend to stand out most because of their garish dress and matted dreads.

Ithaca, NY, home of hippie nonsense

Hey, no problem. Craft beer and hippies go well together.

Of course, craft beer goes well with just about everybody, which is why I’ll never understand why festival promoters seem so surprised when thousands of people show up at their event. Starting at opening time, the entry wait for the festival stretched 45 minutes. Needless to say, not everyone got in. Although I heard nary a complaint, there seemed to be a clear disconnect between the amount of people expected and the amount of people who thronged Stewart Park.

Besides that, however, the festival was quite organized. The brewers were spread out into 5 individual tents, allowing plenty of mingling space in the center. Very capable volunteers were quick with the ice, helpful with requests, and fast on the uptake regarding the beer they were pouring. (NYS has this retarded new law in which brewery personnel can’t pour their own beer at festivals- you have to hand the job over to some kid who knows fuck-all about the beer).

Black Dog Brewing’s Nancy Carson, with a stuffed dog

The only complaint I could muster is the U-shaped table layouts within the tents created a catchment area which made it difficult to form lines for the individual brewery taps. A better solution would be to arrange the tents side by side in two paralell lines, allowing the individual queues to extend straight out instead of forming a confused, drunken clot of humanity.

Festival-goers evaluating the flavor characteristics of beer

My beer of the festival: Stone Ruination IPA, followed closely by Harpoon IPA. Besides tasting great, they also had the virtue of being located next to me.

Anyway, kudos to the guys from Ithaca Brewing for throwing one of the smoothest festivals I’ve attended. From Load-in to tear-down, they didn’t miss a beat, and everyone had a great time.

Except, maybe, that girl who was sitting on the grass behind a pile of her own sick. You really gotta watch that ruination IPA.

-Mark

The Ithaca Brew Fest is this weekend at Stewart Park in gorges Ithaca, New York. Bruce and I will, of course, be pouring for the Rohrbach Brewing Company.

Come on down, bring your thirst, and bring your tie-dye and hacky-sack too because Ithaca is the most hippie-wannabe town this side of Haight-Ashbury. They try waaaaay too hard. But, as this video shows, they have good hallucinogenic drugs.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCQB5QsQkc8]

-Mark