Beer Festival Guide

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Belgium Comes to Cooperstown (August 1 to 3)

B.C.T.C. is a small event, with only 800 tickets available. But the experience is fantastic: more than 150 Belgian and Belgian-style beers, including those of the host, Brewery Ommegang, all situated in wooded farmland near Cooperstown, New York, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Add in the music, camping, starlight, some wild brewer behavior, and you’ve got the Woodstock of brewing, without the brown acid.

Great Taste of the Midwest (August 9)

It’s neither the biggest nor the oldest festival, but it may be the hardest ticket to get. The Great Taste is held in a pretty lakeside setting in Madison, Wisconsin, with 600 beers from 100 brewers—and only 5,000 tickets. The home brewers who sponsor the festival will release 3,000 tickets locally on May 4; there will be a mail-order lottery for the other 2,000. Oh, but it’s worth it! Great beer, great brats, and, of course, great Wisconsin cheese.

World Beer Festival (October 4)

At World Beer, All About Beer magazine gathers together not just craft brewers from around the country but also importers who bring beers from around the world. On the first Saturday in October, they all arrive at the historic ballpark in Durham, North Carolina, where Bull Durham was filmed. There are specialty presentations of aged beers, cask-conditioned beers, and rare and expensive beers. It doesn’t hurt that Durham sits smack-dab in the middle of some of the best barbecue country in the South.

Great American Beer Festival (October 9 to 11)

The G.A.B.F., which takes place in Denver, boasts more breweries and beers than any other fest in the world. Last year, 408 breweries, from Anheuser-Busch to the smallest brewpubs, poured 1,884 different beers for 46,000 attendees during the course of three days. You only get one-ounce pours, but you won’t taste everything: One ounce of every beer on offer would be 117 pints! The G.A.B.F. awards medals in a dizzying list of categories (86 this year), and when the winners are announced on Saturday afternoon, it’s a rush to the annointed taps. Buy tickets beforehand, or pay scalpers’ premiums on the sidewalk.

And, finally, the first Philly Beer Week (I’m one of the organizers) was a big success last month. Watch for this week of 200-plus beer events—festivals, dinners, tastings, pub crawls—again next spring.

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