Once again the Washington Brewers Festival was a huge success. This year, the largest crowds in festival history filled Marymoor Park in Redmond and filled their glasses with tasty Washington beer. In the end, more than 20,000 people attended this year’s festival.
On Saturday alone, attendance topped the 10k mark. I know that at certain times of day there were substantial lines to get in the festival, but when everyone shows up at (more or less) the same time, and many of them do not yet have tickets, something’s gotta give. We warned you about this. All in all, the Washington Beer Commission did a masterful job of running the event. And hey, how about the weather?
We were there all three days, start to finish. Thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth and said hello. In addition to just being there to meet and greet people, we offered information about Washington beer – “Ask Us Anything About WA Beer” was our theme. Wow, did that ever work out well! People have questions and appreciated us being there to provide answers. We will likely expand the program next year to include guest experts at scheduled times. Stuff like that.
As craft beer gets more and more popular, we are attracting more and more craft beer newbies to festivals like this. These people need and want to know the difference between a Stout and a Porter. They need to know how to pronounce Saison. They need to know what SRM means (“A lot of beer geeks can’t even answer that one,” I told him). Why does this barrel-aged beer taste like vanilla? Why do Belgian-style beers taste like that? Why don’t more local breweries make lagers like Chuckanut and Alpine? These craft beer newcomers need to, and want to, get engaged in the dialog of craft beer. We were happy to be at the festival to help make that happen.
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Two great additions to the festival this year. First, the Washington Beer Awards (see our post). Second, more food trucks. Since we have now successfully elevated the beer, let’s keep elevating the food. There was some amazing food at the festival this year. Personally, I chowed down on the an order of fish-n-chips from Fish Basket. And a pizza from Veraci Pizza (mobile wood-fired pizza oven).
Anyway, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is almost 30,000 words worth of pictures from the festival.
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