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Here at long last is my "review" of the Michigan Brewers Guild 11th Annual Summer Beer Festival. The event was about 2.5 weeks ago, July 25-26. Think of me as the poor-man's Chuck Taggart - all of the procrastination, none of the skills. 'Course, if you think this is bad, just wait until I do my posts for Cityfest (July 2-6) and the Concert of Colors (July 17-20). As I was with friends at the beerfest, I wasn't beer-nerding out and taking tasting notes. So I'm just going to give a few impressions of the event, tell you the two important things I learned about events like this, and list the beers I tried along with any notes I can recall.

The event was held in a riverside park in Ypsilanti, a small town just outside of Ann Arbor, which is home to the University of Michigan. The event was held in what is basically a big open field. There were four tents, two in the middle of the field and two at the end opposite the entrance. There were a few trees to provide shade, which was nice as it was a hot-ass day out. The problem with the shade was that it seemed to be near the port-a-potties. Whether it was physically close or just that the wind was exactly wrong, we couldn't hang out in the shade too long for the stink. The other two options were to hang out in the tents (which were super-crowded or not bad, depending on the tent) or sit out in the sun. Down by the river there was a slight breeze, so that helped. There were several water stations around the event so people could try and remain hydrated. These were the big, orange gatorade-style coolers/dispensers which were filled with ice. As these things are insulated, a lot of the time they were "empty" - filled with ice but it wasn't melting due to the insulation. So you weren't always able to get water. There was food available but we never made it over there - we were too busy drinking.

Your $30 entrance fee got you 12 drink tokens, each good for a 3oz pour. Prior to the event, I wasn't sure if this was a good deal or not. As the event went on I learned the First Rule of Beer Festivals:

36oz of beer doesn't seem like a lot, but it can be.

This is an event where breweries are bringing their big guns, both to celebrate beer and to draw new customers to their product. This means a lot of big, ass-kicker, high-ABV beers. So while your tokens work out to "only" three bottles, it is in actuality much more than that. Also, the longer the event went, the more generous the pours got. I don't know if the breweries didn't want to lug open kegs back or if the servers were "getting high off their own supply" (I suspect a little of both), but the 3oz pours turned into 4, 5, and 6oz pours as the day progressed. Plus all those different beers sloshing around in your belly, perhaps fighting one another, seem to have some sort of synergistic drunk-producing effect.

As we didn't get there until about 2:30 on Saturday (the event only went until 6:00), we were still working on our tokens late in the event. People started leaving and handing us their tokens on the way out. So instead of 12 samples for our entrance fee we ended up with about 17. This brings me to the Second Rule of Beer Festivals:

Somewhere around sample 6-8 your palate gets so damn blown out that any nuance in the beer is lost.

I know that the lambic that I tried had a raspberry flavor, but beyond that I couldn't tell you anything about it. Even with taking water every few samples to try and clear my palate after a while all the beers turned into one-note flavor profiles. A lot of them were still tasty, but I think they could have been better with a fresh palate.

Overall the event was a lot of fund and I urge anyone in the area to attends next year's. One thing the organizers should consider for next year is running the event later (until, say, 10pm) but stopping the service at 6pm. That would give people a little time to get their wits about them before they get in their cars and drive home. I'm sure a lot of the people there at the end of the event were like my crew, more than a little drunk. In addition to the food that was available, there were bands playing, so the patrons would have something to do until the event ended even if they weren't drinking.

I seem to have less beers marked in my program than I remember drinking. That should give you an idea of the afternoon that we had. All in all it was a great time and I can't wait for next year's to roll around.