Why You Should Go to a Homebrew Festival | With Video!

 

Hey everyone, Vito from MoreBeer! here. Have you ever been to a home brew festival? I just recently went to Northern California Homebrewers Festival, which I've been going to for ten plus years now. So I took some video from the event just to kind of recap it and show you.

 

So I'll walk you through what you know, what video I got and my thoughts on it, post-events. If you like these videos, make sure you subscribe to our channel. We do product giveaways, we do product reviews, we talk to commercial brewers, homebrew shops, all that kind of stuff. So make sure you like, subscribe, support. We appreciate it.

 

All right. So we started off with, you know, Friday night. That's when everybody's getting there. But the first thing that happens is what they call Hoppy Hour. So several clubs, my club DOZE was pouring there, and it's generally hoppy beers hence the name Hoppy Hour.

 

Seeing friends you haven't seen in a year, good opportunity to kind of be like, "hey, what do you been up to?" You know, we're hanging out, but everybody kind of goes back to their their camps and does bottle shares, potlucks that night. You know, it's kind of just the getting ready time.

 

So every year there's a theme. This year the theme was circus. So all the booths, they go all out, do circus themed costumes, all that kind of stuff. The booths are amazing.

 

So these guys set up like a Zoltar booth from the movie Big. They're the guys that won. And, you know, it's just rad, just super cool, just to hang out for six, 7 hours, walking around, walking into these booths. Trying amazing beer. Having fun, music playing. It's just a great event to be able to pour your home brew for four other homebrewers. Talk, connect with home brewers. I just love it.

 

Hey, your Porter paired with the deep fried Oreo. Oh, that is a good combo.

 

Welcome to DOZE, where, the strongest men drink the strongest beers.

 

So some of the other cool things you see at this festival, you know, amongst other crazy shit, is there's the keg toss, so you're tossing kegs there. It's kind of like the strong man, strong woman competition. So it's how high you can toss it and how far it goes. And there's a prize for each one of those. So that's kind of fun, you know, after you had a couple of beers in and it's just a fun way to throw out your back and have some fun.

 

So the shut up and drink booth, Brian Cooper and David Brandstrom, I think I hopefully said his last name, right? They kind of run the event or organized part of it. But anyways, what they do every year, Brian goes around to every booth and grabs a little bit of beer.

 

 

And then he adds that, you know, he might collect five, six gallons or the beer as it to a Solara barrel that he's got going at his house. So you're taking a little bit of beer from the entire festival and, you know, souring it and then we all drink it next the next year. So at David's booth, you know, they're sampling that beer from last year. So it's kind of fun to try and add some other really creative, exotic beers on tap as well.

 

There's awards for best booth, best food and best beer as well. Best beer's obviously, the one everybody's trying to win. But yeah, some of the other cool stuff, there's the keg competition, which is in the center of the fairgrounds. It's the Lee Shepherd Memorial Competition. So essentially what it is, they'll pick a style. This year was like Cream Ale and Saisons, and then each club enters a beer. And that's a separate competition from like the best booth beer. So that's really cool.

 

They have speakers every year. This year Annie Johnson was one of the speakers. Amazing home brewer, won home brewer the year. She's awesome. It was great to see her speak.

 

So great time. I love this festival. Is there any festivals out by you? I'm sure you know, this is the Northern California, Southern California does, I think the exact same thing. I'd love to hear from you guys. Let me know in the comments. Send me an invite. Maybe I'll come out. What state you're in I might be able to drive it.

 

Send us pictures, tag us in your post. Let's hear about it. I mean, homebrewing is all about the community. And to me, this is like the ultimate community getting together. So it's just super fun. I love this festival. I want to hear about your festivals.

 

Hope you enjoyed this video. Thanks for watching. See you next time.