Michigan Spring Beer Festival Review (2022)

It took three tries but we finally go the Michigan Brewers Guild Spring Beer Festival in 2022 in Traverse City.  With around 100 breweries from across the state bringing some of their most delicious brews, we headed to the home of the Traverse City Pit Spitters to catch up on Ken’s first festival since Winter 2020.

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The weekend started Friday. We had dinner and enjoyed the tap takeover at 7 Monks Taproom in Traverse City.  – The lineup included Five Shores Brewery, Mitten Brewing Company, and Bell’s Brewery. It was a can’t miss event!

 

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The 3rd annual Inaugural Michigan Spring Beer Festival is the newest of the now five major festivals that the Michigan Brewers Guild throws every year. Michigan boasts 400 breweries that have seating and around 100 of them were there on Saturday. The full list of beers can be found HERE and you can find our list of beers to check out HERE

Here are some highlights from Saturday’s festival:

Concessions!

One of the struggle points of these festivals is with so many people, even with proper planning, waiting for food/bathrooms can  be a hassle.  The Spring Beer Festival took place inside the ballpark, so festival goers were treated to a staff who was prepared for concessions and large crowds with appropriate bathroom needs and facilities.  The food was standard ballpark food with street mac & cheese, corn dogs, and funnel fries.  The choices were limited but perfect to help continue your trip around the ballpark moving from brewery to brewery. All of this was a change of pace from the parking lot outside the ballpark in Comstock Park.

Fresh Looks

The ballpark allowed for a nice circle of breweries to continuously walk through. While festival goers were barred from the grounds of the field, you could still sit in the stands and lay in the grass seating areas. This provided plenty of room to ‘escape’ the beer fest and relax with your taster.

Lots of breweries decided on bringing cans instead of jockey boxes, which was a new ordeal for the typical brewers guild festival.  It allowed for less waste from open kegs and weather changing pours trying to get the draft system to work perfectly. It also made the cleanup much easier after the festival. 

What was also nice is the breweries felt like they all had a little room and were not smashed into each other.  You could cycle the baseball diamond and get around fairly easily.

The Michigan Beer Community

This was the first festival back for Ken after his hiatus of beer drinking. He was excited to see old friends and meet new friends throughout the festival.  

We ran into Lynette and Dean of Downey Brewing Company. Both were excited to be away from the brewery. They enjoued introducing themselves to a new festival with new craft beer fans learning about them for the first time ever!  Dean was excited to share his high octane Irish Red as well

We also spoke with Robb Klaty about the opening of Tenacity Craft in Detroit (finally), distilling beers, and what the future is going to come of the Flint/Detroit brewery!

We also finally got a chance to meet Jay Green of Perrin Brewing Co and get our hands on this years version of No Rules!

The Beers!

With the only one day of the festival to try as much as we could, here are the best beers that we tasted during the event (with hundreds of beers to try, we could never try them all, but wanted to shout out the few libations that were truly amazing) : 

4D – Kuhnhenn Brewing Co (Warren/Clinton Township) – Ken

Strawberries and Cream – Arbor Brewing Co (Ypsilanti) – Julia

VCP 123 – Unexpected Craft Brewing Company (Oak Park) – Ken

Bramble on Rose – Ore Dock Brewing Company (Marquette) – Julia

What was your favorite beer from Spring Beer Fest 2022? Did you check out any from The List – 20 Beers To Try at the Michigan Brewer’s Guild Spring Beer Festival (2022)?  Let us know!

Cheers!