beer events Archives – PorchDrinking.com
Chicago Brewery Events This April
April 3, 2024 | Rachel Morrison
Spring has sprung, and there’s no shortage of beer events happening across Chicago this month as we (hopefully) get more sunny days and patio weather. Beer Culture Center starts the month with an event at Siebel Institute of Technology, Industry Ales opens its doors, and you have options for celebrating 420. Here are Chicago brewery events this April!
Copper State Beer Festival, Mesa AZ | Jan 13th 2024
February 2, 2024 | Ruvani de Silva
Sweaters are being stripped off, sleeves are being rolled up, and hats are perched on heads as the sparkling winter sun permeates Mesa, AZ’s Riverview Park. Copper State Beer Festival is in full swing, and the weather is offering up its desert best for the 5,000 visitors the event has attracted. This is the third year the festival has taken place, drawing beer lovers from across Arizona and further afield to one of Phoenix’s hippest suburbs for an afternoon of imbibement. As Arizona’s craft beer scene blooms like a cactus flower, consumers are catching on, creating space for this frankly huge event featuring 72 breweries, plus a range of cideries, wineries, meaderies, distilleries, seltzer makers, bars and bottle shops. While the focus is firmly on beer, this is an event with something for everyone and an opportunity for local businesses to showcase their offerings alongside high-profile national names. There’s even a skating rink and axe throwing, which beats the heck out of the usual spin-the-wheel attractions beer festivals offer (FYI there was also spin-the-wheel).
Weathered Souls | 2023 Whale Rider Set
October 2, 2023 | Eric Griffin
Weathered Souls Brewing has been around since 2016, and since then has made waves throughout the industry. Most notably in 2020, co-owner and Head Brewer Marcus Baskerville started the Black is Beautiful initiative, a movement with the mission to bring awareness to the injustices that many people of color face daily. This open-ended collaboration has inspired the support of hundreds of breweries across the country, and this year even saw the launch of Volume 2.0 of the Black is Beautiful initiative in honor of the opening of the National Black Brewers Association (NB2A) back in May. Marcus and Weathered Souls also had another exciting ‘first’ in 2023 with their highly sought-after Whale Rider Imperial Stout. July 29th marked the date of the inaugural Whale Rider Day.
The Complete PorchDrinking 2023 GABF Week Events Guide
September 16, 2023 | Emma Wargolet
The return of the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) each year serves as one of the greatest spectacles in American craft beer. And while the festival, which kicks off this week on Thursday, September 21, is a feat in and of itself, what happens outside of the Convention Center is equally as exciting. External beer events built around the return of GABF have already begun kicking off, and they offer beer fans a unique opportunity to explore rare and exciting new beers from breweries not typically available in the state of Colorado but also serve to showcase some of the best that the state of Colorado can offer. Read More
Where to Celebrate Oktoberfest in Chicago
September 8, 2023 | Rachel Morrison
Oktoberfest season is upon us whether you’re ready for it or not. Oktoberfest styles start getting released in August, and celebrations tend to follow in September. While not all Chicago breweries are hosting official Oktoberfest celebrations, there are many opportunities to celebrate the two-week festival that originated in Munich back in 1810. If you’re not able to make the trip to Germany, you have a lot of options right here in Chicago.
Real Wild & Woodsy Festival | Flagstaff, Arizona
July 11, 2023 | Ruvani de Silva 2
For lovers of mixed culture, foeder-conditioned, funky and barrel-aged beers, the Real Wild & Woodsy Festival really is the Teddy Bears’ (or should that be Teddy Beers’?) Picnic of festivals. Held just outside the center of Flagstaff at the Arizona Historical Society’s Pioneer Museum for the first time this year, the festival feels like a secret garden party.
Three Chicago Breweries Launch the Brewer’s Triangle
May 9, 2023 | Emma Wargolet
Chicago is well-known for its multitude of breweries, and it can be overwhelming for a first-time visitor to try to decide which ones to go to. Certain Chicago neighborhoods have more breweries than some, such as Avondale and Logan Square. Three of the breweries in this area have combined forces to create the Brewer’s Triangle, a newly formed conglomerate of Maplewood Brewery & Distillery, Ravinia Brewing Co. and Metropolitan Brewing.
Austin Beerworks, Meanwhile Brewing and Kaiju Cut & Sew Release Social Harmony: A Kaiju Brew, benefiting Austin’s AAPI Community
January 24, 2023 | Ruvani de Silva
Austin Beerworks co-founder and director of brewing operations Will Golden and Kaiju Cut & Sew owner Chris Gomez are back celebrating the Lunar New Year and fundraising for their local Asian American and Pacific Islander communities with Social Harmony: A Kaiju Brew Roasted Barley Tea- Infused Gold Lager, brewed to herald the Year of the Rabbit.
Event Recap | Texas Craft Brewers Festival 2022
October 17, 2022 | Ruvani de Silva
A sold-out Texas Craft Brewer’s Festival took place on Saturday October 8th at Fiesta Gardens alongside Austin’s Lady Bird Lake. The event brought together over 85 Texas breweries, 250 beers … Read More
Event Review | Little Beer II
April 15, 2022 | Brandon Cohran
What happens when you take some of the best in-and-out of state lager makers and bring them all to one town green in Duluth? A really damn good time enjoying Little Beer.
Over the weekend, Duluth’s Good Word & Public House hosted their second annual “Little Beer” fest, which saw 60+ breweries bring their best low ABV (mostly ~5% and lower) beers to the tables for craft drinkers to enjoy all day long. Oh, and there was snow — which for Georgia in April what the hell was that?! Read More
Event Recap | 2022 Side Project Invitational
April 14, 2022 | Eric Griffin
It has been just over two years since the inaugural Side Project Invitational came and went, setting a new standard for craft beer festivals. Not long after its debut on February 2, 2020, the entire world was shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of which are continuing to bare their teeth even into the early parts of 2022. It hasn’t all been bad, though. On January 31, Side Project announced the second Invitational, which was to include not only Barrel-Aged Stouts & Barleywines, but instead all varieties of oak-aged beer. This, to the joy of many, was set to include the wild, the funky and the sour.
It’s Okay That You’re Not Okay | Coping with Anxiety in Craft Beer
March 21, 2022 | David Nilsen
I was standing in the middle of a wide, crowded aisle at the 2019 Great American Beer Festival in Denver when I felt a familiar fog begin to close in inside my head. My thoughts got fuzzy and abstract, my eyes became fixed on the middle distance as the edges blurred, and my jaw felt wired shut. I was a silent observer inside a robot body.
Event Recap | 2022 Winter Brew Fest
February 2, 2022 | Korey David
On Saturday, January 22, the Winter Brew Fest at Mile High Station kicked off the new year with a bang as the first official beer festival of the year in Denver. Attendees enjoyed over 100 beers, hard kombuchas, hard seltzers, and spirits to sample over day and evening sessions.
Austin Beerworks and Kaiju Cut & Sew Launch Eastern Philosophy: A Kaiju Brew – The First Beer Supporting Stop AAPI Hate
February 2, 2022 | Ruvani de Silva
Sunday, January 30, was the launch of Eastern Philosophy: A Kaiju Brew – the first beer brewed to fundraise for Stop AAPI Hate. The brainchild of Will Golden, Director of Brewing Operations and Co-founder of Austin Beerworks and Chris Gomez, Owner of Kaiju Cut & Sew, the event brought together several local businesses, with hundreds of Austinites in attendance to show their support and get a taste of this very special beer.
Craft Women Connect, Blk Brew Babes, Pontoon Brewing & The Atlanta Podcast | Pomona Paradise Smoothie-Style Fruited Sour
June 10, 2021 | Ruvani de Silva
Not one, not two, but three of Atlanta’s Black beer-community groups have joined forces with Pontoon Brewing to create the Pomona Paradise Smoothie-Style Sour. The beer came out of Pontoon’s ongoing Brewing Conversations project with The Atlanta Podcast–a community-focused initiative to raise awareness about inclusivity and racial issues in and around the Atlanta beer scene.
Texas Craft Brewers Guild Launches Liquid Bake Sale Fundraiser
April 9, 2021 | Ruvani de Silva 1
Who doesn’t love a bake sale? All manner of excitingly delicious, affectionately prepared offerings to tempt the taste buds, with any guilty feelings of over-indulgence thoroughly negated by the knowledge that one is stuffing one’s face to fundraise for a most-worthy charitable cause. A winning fundraising formula employed by school boards, scout troops and religious institutions across the nation, the bake sale has taken on a new and exciting beery form, courtesy of the Texas Craft Brewers Guild.
Queer Beer Festival Q&A with Grace Weitz
April 6, 2021 | Emma Wargolet
Many groups in the craft beer industry are underrepresented, including the LGBTQ+ community. When Grace Weitz of Hop Culture let PorchDrinking know that a Queer Beer Festival was launching this year after the success of the Beers With(out) Beards festival, I knew I had to chat with Weitz to learn more about the festival and what sort of virtual events we can expect. The festival will be held on June 5, 2021 and tickets can be purchased here.
Phase Three Brewing and Affy Tapple Collaboration Beer | A Bushel of Apples
October 23, 2020 | Alex Sertic
Phase Three Brewing, located northwest suburbs of Chicago (Lake Zurich), is arguably one of the hottest breweries in the nation. Some of their beers lean to the obscure and experimental side (Crème Series, Nectar Series), but they also produce well-executed classics (Helles Lager, Märzen, Pils). that largely receive high grades among beer geeks and professionals alike. The brewery recently garnered attention for its collaboration with Affy Tapple: A Bushel of Apples. We talked with Phase Three about their brewery, the pandemic and the sweet, Halloween-treat beer release.
Q&A with Beers With(out) Beards Founder Grace Weitz
September 11, 2020 | Emma Wargolet
As with every other 2020 beer festival, Beers With(out) Beards, the country’s largest celebration of women in craft beer, is doing things virtually this year. I had the chance to chat with Grace Weitz, the woman who started the festival back in 2018, about how the festival began, what we can expect for this years’ festival, and how going virtual offers up the ability to reach an entirely different group of women.
While the main virtual festival is on Saturday, October 10, you can add on workshops that take place on the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday before. You can buy the digital passes up until the day of the event. However, if you are looking to purchase the beer box of female-led breweries, sales end on Monday, September 14 (at the end of the day).
Event Recap | The Side Project Invitational
February 14, 2020 | Eric Griffin
An Inaugural to Remember
It’s been almost two weeks since the Side Project Invitational, and attendees’ heads are still spinning over the experience. Subtitled as “A Festival of Barrel-Aged Stouts & Barleywines,” it was immediately advertised as not for the faint of heart. Strategically placed on Super Bowl Sunday, February 2nd, as the kickoff to Side Project’s annual Stout Week, it brought people from all over the United States to Maplewood, Missouri to see what all the hype was about.
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