Now the reason we finally ended up coming to Marquette and crossing all of their breweries off of the list was spurred by one event, the 14th annual Upper Peninsula Fall Beer Festival. The festival is held the Saturday after Labor Day every year in Mattson Lower Harbor Park overlooking Lake Superior on the shores of Marquette. The Upper Peninsula Fall Beer Festival is put on annually by the Michigan Brewers Guild. This was the 2023 iteration of the festival that was held on Saturday September 9th.
This was a bucket list beer festival for me to visit, always wanted to go, never had the time. So I made the time to finally go in 2023. I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day for it to take place. It was 72 degrees and sunny with not a single cloud in the sky, and Lake Superior provides the most beautiful background for any beer festival you can possibly attend.
The festival went from 1 p.m. until 6 p.m. (One hour early entry for Michigan Brewers Guild Enthusiast Members) This edition of the festival featured over 500 unique Michigan brewed beers from 87 different breweries.
This festival is much more intimate than the other Brewers Guild Festivals held throughout the year. It also features a much more different brewery line-up than most of the ones that are held downstate. It showcases more of the Northern Michigan breweries than the downstate festivals seem to have. 19 of the 87 breweries were from the Upper Peninsula, and about half of the breweries in attendance are located North of the Mount Pleasant area. In the Ypsilanti and Detroit festivals, I bet that number is a little closer to 25-30% of the breweries in attendance are from North of Mount Pleasant.
Alas this does make sense, the U.P. Beer Festival provides a lot less traveling for Upper Peninsula breweries than driving down to Detroit or Ypsilanti, and vice versa for Southern Michigan breweries heading to Marquette for the festival. This leads to quite a bit more space between most tents, and a lot of room to walk around, whereas for example the Eastern Market Fall Festival sometimes seems like too many people and breweries crammed into a smaller space.
Some of the breweries in attendance included some of your big boys, Bell’s Brewing Company, Short’s Brewing Company, Arbor Brewing Company. Some of my favorites that were there included Transient Brewing Company, Our Brewing Company, Cedar Springs Brewing Company, Stormcloud Brewing Company, and many others. Last but not least some of the Upper Peninsula breweries that were showcased included Kognisijon Brygerri, Barrel+Beam, Ore Dock Brewing Company, Blackrocks Brewing Company, and ByGeorge Brewing Company.
Now when it comes to beer festivals and taking notes, I don’t really take notes, I am just trying to enjoy myself. Also, cell service is usually not great at festivals, and really not great at a festival in the Upper Peninsula. Since it was over a year ago, I won’t even try to pretend to know what beers I sampled there either, it would be disingenuous for me to attempt that. But I did run into some familiar faces while at the festival, including a few followers of this page, Jennifer Chinitz and Brenda Smith. I ran into quite a few other people I know from the industry, not limited to but including various bartenders, brewers, owners, line cleaners, and salespeople.
The funniest thing that we saw at this particular beer festival. One gentleman had been completely overserved, and was attempting to get a drink in front of me at a booth. The person pouring drinks realized this and was refusing to serve him. Then the guy said I am completely sober watch this, he set his cup down, walked outside of the tent and attempted to do a backflip. He DID NOT succeed, he landed flat on his face and then he tried to stand back up and fell back down to the ground. When he came to it after a few seconds, he stood up and his pants fell down around his ankles. But sadly, he was wearing no underwear, and he was swiftly escorted off the premises by medical personnel to make sure he was okay. He really did a great job proving his sobriety, and his face probably feels it to this day.
If I were an olympic judge, he would get a 2/10 on form, a 1/10 on execution (He at least tried it), a 10/10 on the ouch factor, and a 10/10 on the embarrassment scale. If you average all of it out, he might qualify for the bronze medal at the annual Darwin Award Ceremony, Congratulations! Random overserved guy at the beer festival.
So if you are looking for a beautiful, fun beer festival with plenty of room for beer drinking shenanigans, I highly recommend traveling to Marquette for the Annual Upper Peninsula Fall Beer Festival. It is my personal favorite of all the festivals that the Brewers Guild puts on annually. But as always, be safe and drink responsibly. Prost!
P.S. We left our phones in the car on the day of the festival, so the pictures included are from other Brewers Guild festivals. I also had so much fun with the staff from SuperNatural Brewing and Spirits this summer at the beer festival that I figured I would include them again.
#brewery #beerlovers #yooperlife #upperpeninsula #drinklocal #michiganbeer
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