Well after the long birthday weekend, I need a little bit of time to work on some new brewery reviews. But in good news, I attended the Summer Beer Festival in Ypsilanti, Michigan this weekend so lets go ahead and review that instead.
This year was the 25th annual Summer Beer Festival hosted by the Michigan Brewers Guild. It was at Riverside Park in Depot Town of Ypsilanti. The festival is held over two days, which were this past Friday 7/26 and Saturday 7/27. I attended Saturday where I roamed around, drank some beers, chatted with some of you guys, and then I ended up pouring beverages for SuperNatural Brewing and Spirits from 4:30 until 6.
This year’s Summer Beer Festival featured 109 Michigan breweries, serving 685 unique beers in 83 different style categories. The Summer Beer Festival is the oldest of the Michigan Brewers Guild’s five annual festivals.
I want to give a shout out to 2 members of the page, Ashley and Jose Alfaro, thanks for being my designated driver and putting up with my drunken shenanigans all day long. You guys allowed the last day of my 30s to be quite the memorable one, or that’s what my drunkenly hazy brain is telling me it was. It was definitely fun, that much I remember. I must be getting older, it’s 2 days later and light still hurts my eyes. Must be my body’s way of telling me, congratulations you are officially 40 now.
Saturday was a beautiful day for a beer festival. It was a little warm at times but other than that, I can’t complain about the weather at all. This time around it seemed a little less crowded than previous Summer Beer Festivals that I have been to. But that wasn’t a problem, more beer for me.
I ran into quite a few followers of the page, and quite a few more that I know from my time working at Bearded Lamb Brewing Company. On a side note, we will be opening on Monday August 5th, can’t wait to see you all again. It has been an awesome summer of drinking beer and traveling, now it’s time to get back to serving beer to all my wonderful customers.
Now time for the beer itself. I spent a lot of the day hopping around to some of my favorite breweries. I stopped at a lot of tents, and drank a lot of beers throughout the day. Some were very memorable, some not so much, but that will happen. I think this is the first festival I have been to where I didn’t get one beer that was so bad that I couldn’t finish it.
Honorable mentions for best beer at the festival that I tried, Someday Brewing Company- AutoBahn- Kolsch. City Built- Pitter Patter- Robust Porter. Ogma Brewing (Collaboration with Kognisjon Bryggeri – Voidbjorn- Pilsner.
My 5 favorite beers from the festival, and I did decide to rank these in order, 1 and 2 were the easiest to rank but the others were a little harder to put in a ranking spot:
5. Archival Brewing Company- The Duke Says Nein- Other ale. This was a very light, crisp refreshing beer made with a kolsch yeast. Very nice and clean for a warm day outside. I hope I see this in cans out here soon, I will definitely be getting some for a fridge.
4. Barrel and Beam- Rouge- Flanders Red Ale. I love a good Flanders Red Ale, and other than this one the only other one I saw was from Perrin, Roselare, which is also outstanding. But this one was an absolutely perfect representation of a Flanders Red.
3. Transient Artisan Ales- Buckley Select #2- Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout. Dark, rich and a nice healthy 13.7 ABV, I love the entire Buckley line from Transient. This one is a sipper but my god is it absolutely delicious.
Now to #2 and #1……Both came from Silver Harbor Brewing Company. Both were winners of Gold medals at the World Beer Cup this year and you could absolutely taste why.
2. Toastbusters- Sweet/ Milk Stout- This one was a little lighter than the previous entry at 8.2% ABV, but it tasted like you were drinking a glass of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I want more of this for my fridge. Unfortunately they don’t distribute out in our area, maybe one day. Or I can take a trip to Saint Joseph and give them a visit again.
1.Two Brewers are Better Than One- Belgian Quad. This was hands down the tastiest beer that the beer festival had to offer this year. It was absolutely perfect. Weighing in at 10.5 % ABV, this beer dangerously did not taste like it at all. I felt like I could have sat at the booth drinking it all day, but I might not have lived to tell the story.
I had an absolute blast at the festival, ran into people I know, drank some beer, poured some beer. I would like to thank SuperNatural Brewing and Spirits for inviting me to come pour with them again.
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