To paraphrase Scottie, if we didn't move to Birmingham back in 2007, we would never have known about the
Michigan Brewers Guild Winter Beer Festival. But I will add "...until this year." Tickets for the 8th Annual Festival went on sale back in December, and regretfully we (or rather I) dropped the ball logging in around 10pm only to find that their 6000 tickets sold out within 10 hours. Scottie and I were devastated, well, not really, but February just would not be the same without festival.
Luckily, a few weeks laters, after purchasing Scottie's Christmas present, a good friend of ours that we have known over the years in Michigan from beer events like this helped us acquire some tickets. I won't go into the details, but let's just say, we love Jason and the
Clubhouse BFD for helping us out! And now streak of every other year is finally broken:
A few days before the festival, we prepared by renewing our
Michigan Brewers Guild Memberships (to get into the festival an hour early, a must for this festival!), signing up for the new
GR Hopper Bus Shuttle to get up to
Fifth Third Ballpark in Comstock (just a short drive from Grand Rapids, but getting cab up there is a pain), and digging out our ski clothes (that we don't use for skiing!).
This year, we ended up driving up Saturday morning arriving at the
Amway Grand Hotel about an hour before our scheduled shuttle pick-up. It was perfect timing as we checked into our room, hydrated, and toured the hotel. It was our first time in the luxurious
Amway, and it was an extravagant, ornate, hotel that seemed like an indoor city with a variety of shopping, dining, and relaxing options. If I was 5, I would have been in heaven exploring all the nooks and crannies in this hotel. It was old luxury compared to when we've stayed over at the
JW Marriott. We also spotted a lot of couples sitting throughout the hotel writing in a journal of some sort, and we later discovered that they were on a Marriage Getaway Weekend to Remember sponsored by
FamilyLife. It was quite a bizarre thing to witness people like us heading to an outdoor beer festival while other guests were deep into praying/working on their marriage. To each their own!
Luckily, we were the first ones on our
GR Hopper shuttle at noon (the 11:30am was sold out!) that made a few pit stops throughout downtown Grand Rapids (which in retrospect, could have been reduced to maybe 3 stops instead of 5) before we hopped US-131N towards
Fifth Third Ballpark. We hoped to arrive at least a little before the 1pm entrance time to avoid waiting in what we suspected was quite a long line. The
Enthusiast Membership pays off! While the representative from
GR Hopper was a little flustered from having to run around to the different stops, our bus driver was amazing. He bypassed a mile long line of cars trying to exit for the festival dropping us off in front at around 11:40. As he proclaimed, I'm bigger. And that was true.
Scottie and I hauled into the festival sipping our first
wooden token (we were happy to see that there was the option for coin or wooden tokens this year!) sample in Tent 1 at
Dark Horse Brewing Company with the
Bourbon Barrel Aged Plead the Fifth Imperial Stout and
The B.O.B. with the Peanut Butter Porter respectively.
Temperatures hovered in the lower 30s especially later in the afternoon and at times, snow flakes completed the atmosphere. It wouldn't be complete without a little snow, cold, and wet feet! Next year, we'll have to change-up our socks as the ski socks just didn't get cut it this year. Another lesson learned was to use my hand warmers earlier in the day. I was holding out as long as I could, but not sure why because those guys were toasty still at 10pm.
With over
625 beers from 74 unique breweries separated into 4 tents, we had a large task ahead of us for the next 5 hours or so. Another highlight from Tent 1 was finally getting a taste of this year's
Bell's Bourbon Barrel Black Note Stout. At Tent 2, we enjoyed
Hopcat's Oil Rigger Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout and
Grand Rapid Brewing Company's John Ball Organic Nut Brown Ale (a new brewery for us!).
At Tent 3, we found another new brewery with some solid stouts at the
Mitten Brewing Company, but Tent 4 was our powerhouse. We managed to squeeze our way in to get some
Founder's Canadian Breakfast Stout (CBS) (figuring that waiting in line all day for their other great beers wasn't worth it in the Winter, but definitely in the Summer). We also enjoyed a couple of the newer breweries, including
Ore Dock's Primordial Porter,
Paw Paw's Coconut Porter (plus
we signed the Paw Paw board for David!), and
Pike 51's Sabotage Milk Stout with Coffee.
By the end of the festival, we did end up meeting up with Craig and his crew, but we were pretty much done at 5:30 heading back on our shuttle. It was probably for the best as we napped until 10pm and headed back out to
HopCat for their late night
menu (a tradition) of tacos and crack fries. We were both starving as our food for the day consisted of Starbuck breakfast wrap, banana, clif bar, and a whole lot of pretzels from our necklaces!
Later, we stopped into the
Grand Rapids Brewing Company where we enjoyed talking with (and collecting several of his business cards) an off-duty manager and our bartender. This is Michigan's first certified organic brewery (and is now home to one of the brewers we knew from
HopCat), and it was in what seemed like a restored building with exposed ceiling. A nice addition to the city. The next morning, we continued our tradition of brunch at
San Chez Bistro. Another great experience in our favorite city outside of Birmingham! Cheers!
Here's our full list of beer ratings using a new 5 cap rating scale from
Untappd and more photos
here.
No comments:
Post a Comment