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Cracking open a cold one, enjoying the wheat flavors during your favorite team’s game, or cooling off with a refreshing brew after lunch. No matter the reason, everyone loves coming together over a nice cold beer. What better way to mix this with the latest, most unique craft beers, than heading to a beer festival? Check out our list of can’t-miss beer festivals throughout the year, starting with the Holiday Ale Fest.
Holiday Ale Fest
It’s the most wonderful time of the year – the Holiday Ale Fest in Portland, Oregon. The festival takes place at Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland and is a major hit for the 21+ crowd. The festival is home to hundreds of beer selections from local breweries, often bringing something special for the event. The beers combine the best ales with all your favorite flavors of the holiday season. This year’s selection includes a s’more flavored stout by Base Camp Brewing Co., peppermint and white chocolate flavored beer by Three Mugs Brewing Co., a cranberry sauce inspired brew by Portland Cider Co., and more. Plus with beers with names like ‘Olive the Other Reindeer’, from Bear Republic Brewing Co., ‘Yule Only Live Once’, from Hopworks Urban Brewery, or ‘Gnome for the Holidays’, from Logsdon Farmhouse Ales, you are sure to get into the holiday spirit.
Stick around after the festival ends for the annual Sunday Beer Brunch, happening on Dec. 2. Enjoy craft beers by Brasserie Dupont, including the Avec Les Bons Voeux brew, perfectly complementing your European style brunch. Enjoy the Belgian waffles, quiche, macarons, cheeses, meats, and chocolates too. All the beers featured will be unique to the brunch, so be sure not to miss out!
Extreme Beer Fest
This festival is for the adventurous beer drinker. Hosted by Beer Advocate, a magazine dedicated to beers, the 15th annual Extreme Beer Fest will take place Feb. 2-3, 2018, at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, MA. The festival features crazy beers from breweries all across the globe, broken up into three sessions over the two-day span. Past years have featured Dogfish Head’s ‘Beer for Breakfast’, with scrapple and maple flavors, Trophy Brewing’s ‘The King’, with peanut and peanut butter flavors, and Otter Creek’s ‘Rainbow Licker’, a beer aged in starburst candies.
Bacon and Beer Classic
If this event’s name is any indication of how this event will go, you know it’ll be good. The Bacon and Beer Classic will happen in Saint Paul, Minnesota on July 14th, 2019, at CHS Field. The festival has unlimited food and drinks, with beers from over 100 local breweries and dozens of bacon-based dishes, plus games, an eating contest, and other fun in the stadium. Some of this year’s dishes include bacon banh mi, bacon rice Krispies, bacon caramel and bacon toffee, and even whiskey-glazed bacon on bacon chip with bacon beer cheese. Bacon and Beer Classic hosts multiple events across multiple cities, so if you can’t make it to Santa Clara, check out some of the other sites later in the year.
NYC Craft Beer Fest
New York City Craft Beer Fest is a week-long fair of craft beers and ales happening at the end of February 2019. The week’s events take place across the city, highlighting the best brews from the five boroughs. Events in past years have included the all-out Opening Bash, with over 50 beer vendors, the NYC Fermentation Festival, which is an entire family-friendly day surrounding fermentation processes and all things fermented, and the Brewer’s Choice night, a chance to be served specially made beers by the brewers themselves.
Chicago Craft Beer Week
The windy city’s premier beer event, the Chicago Craft Beer Week will happen May 18th – 25th 2018 in Chicago, IL. The week kicks off with the annual Beer Under Glass event at the beautiful Garfield Park Conservatory. Local brewers come bearing their best and most unique crafts, making this event a must-attend for those looking for a fresh new taste. The week of festivities only gets more exciting, with an event celebrating female brewers, a unique event pairing homebrewers with artists of all forms to represent the brew through their art, beer pong contests, and more.