Tickets are now on sale for the largest beer festival in the state, and it has never looked better
The days are growing longer and warmer, and that means beer festival season is almost here. As of today, April 8th, tickets are on sale for the Washington Brewers Festival — the largest and longest-running beer festival in the state, hosted by the Washington Brewers Guild. The event takes place on Saturday, June 13th, at Seattle Center. It features beers from 75 Washington breweries, along with cider and other beverages from local producers.
Washington Brewers Festival
Saturday, June 13th. 5-8pm (4-5pm Early Access – limited supply, so hurry)
Seattle Center, Fisher Pavilion & South Fountain Lawn
Tickets Here
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The New Era of Beer Fests
Over its long history — the Washington Brewers Festival originated in the 1990s — many things have changed. The very nature of a beer festival, for instance. Once upon a time, it was all about the beer, with little attention paid to the festival experience itself. Twenty years ago, beer lovers would gladly gather in a depressing bomb shelter, with too-quiet music piped through a tin-can PA system. If it meant access to all those beers, we didn’t care.
Old-timers and the most seriously afflicted beer geeks may still long for that kind of spartan experience, as if enduring the stark lifelessness earns them a craft beer merit badge. But the majority of today’s beer consumers want something more — especially the under-40 crowd. Sorry, grandpa, but attracting younger generations isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s essential for the industry’s survival.
And yes, we really did do the bomb shelter beer festival — more than once. The Exhibition Hall at Seattle Center hosted several beer fests over the years, and it truly was a fallout shelter. Literally. The basement of the building housing the Pacific Northwest Ballet was an Eisenhower-era bomb shelter, not a place for a joyous event like a beer festival.
Cold War kids like me came of age during a dark, sad time when craft beer drinkers were a small subset of a subset. Good beer was hard to find, and a beer festival’s primary function was simply to provide access to it. By comparison, craft beer is now mainstream and ubiquitous — available at your local grocery store and even the neighborhood dive bar. A broad selection is no longer confined to festivals. This is the world we dreamed of twenty years ago.
Today, the beer should remain front and center, but festival organizers must place greater focus on the experience surrounding it. Today’s festivalgoers are looking for experiences that include beer, not experiences that are beer. The Washington Brewers Guild, which organizes the Washington Brewers Festival, gets it.
This year, for the third consecutive year, the festival takes place outside at Seattle Center, in the shadow of the Space Needle. Old-timers are welcome to gaze longingly across the lawn — past the fountain, toward the old Exhibition Hall, whose dreary basement is mentioned above. I’m no spring chicken myself, but I’ll be basking in the sunny future, enjoying the festival in the shadow of the Space Needle, not the shadow of the past.
The beer will be spectacular, but so will everything surrounding it. The Washington Brewers Guild has put together a fun and intentional entertainment lineup, along with a more robust selection of non-beer beverages. The location is fabulous — and not at all a bomb shelter.
For the past two years, the Washington Brewers Festival has attracted a younger, more diverse crowd than the old Marymoor Park days. I expect the same this year. The event now better reflects where craft beer needs to go, not where it used to be.
Note for those lamenting the end of the Marymoor Park era. If you must blame someone, blame King County Parks. The festival you loved can no longer happen. King County Parks changed things, raised rates, wanted to move it to a parking lot, and so on. They wanted the beer festival to leave. And, whether you approve or not, the festival needed to adapt to the new era. Sorry, Mom and Dad, but reality hurts.
List of Participating Breweries (as of publication time)
- 192 Brewing Company
- 210 Brewing Co.
- 7 Seas Brewing Co
- Anacortes Brewery
- Aslan Brewing Co.
- Bale Breaker Brewing Company
- Barley POP! Brewing
- Beach Cat Brewing
- BIZARRE BREWING
- Boundary Bay Brewing Company
- Brothers Cascadia Brewing
- Burke-Gilman Brewing Company
- Chuckanut Brewery
- Cloudburst Brewing
- Dick’s Brewing Company
- Dru Bru
- Elliott Bay Brewing Co
- Fair Isle Brewing
- Flying Bike Cooperative Brewery
- Flying Lion Brewing
- Formula Brewing
- Friends And Neighbors Brewing
- Future Primitive Brewing
- Garden Path Fermentation
- Georgetown Brewing Company
- Ghostfish Brewing
- Haas Innovations Brewing LLC.
- Halcyon Brewing
- Hellbent Brewing Company
- Icicle Brewing Company
- Kulshan Brewing Co.
- Ladd & Lass Brewing
- Logan Brewing Company
- Loowit Brewing Company
- Lucky Envelope Brewing
- Lumberbeard Brewing
- Mac & Jack’s /Silver City Brewing
- Matchless Brewing
- Metier Brewing Company
- Outer Planet
- Peace of Mind Brewing
- Postdoc Brewing
- Powerhouse Restaurant and Brewery
- Project 9 Brewing
- Ravenna Brewing Co
- Rooftop Brewing Company LLC
- Single Hill Brewing Company
- Skookum Brewery
- Steam Donkey Brewing Co
- Stoup Brewing
- Structures Brewing
- Terramar Brewing & Distilling
- Trap Door Brewing
- U-Neek Brewing Company
- Volition Brewing
- Watts Brewing Company
- Well 80 Brewing Company
Visit our events page and calendar to learn about all sorts of other upcoming beer events. To submit an event for inclusion on our events calendar, use our event submission form. Got more details to share, reach out to us.
