Events: Michigan Brewers Guild Beerfest ’09

The Michigan Brewers Guild each year puts on a beer festival,  typically the event is held over two days, this year it was held over the Friday and Saturday of July 24 & 25th. At this event a huge number of local brewers have the opportunity to show off the brews that they have built of the cooked up. This year it was held in Ypsilanti Mi at the wonderful Riverside Park, this was an excellent venue for the event in which over 50 different brewers attend with a total of 300 different beers offered up for tasting. This was a great event to attend, it was filled with a variety of beer enthusiasts, some college students looking to mingle and have a good time to the more hardcore enthusiasts and everyone in between.

We tried a variety of different beers in different styles, though it seemed that mostly IPAs and lagers were the predominant choices that brewers were going with this year. I am a big fan of both of these styles of beer, I was surprised to find a couple of fruit lambic styles and a style called the Brain Freeze by Kuhnhenn Brewing Co of Warren Michigan. Brain Freeze is a slushy beer, which was very refreshing and tasted wonderful; though it took a little getting used, I have never had anything at all like this. The Livery out of Benton Harbor had a wonderful Red Canoe Lager, that had a sweet and smokey flavor to it. Over the next couple of weeks we will review more in depth the various beers that we drank at this event and let you know which ones were great, good and the one we would stay away from.

As the crowds of beer drinkers milled through the different stands and waited in lines for the different lagers, ales, meads and barely wines; people talked and met new people that shared a common interest. The Wisdom of Beer team went to the Friday evening gathering and had an absolutely great time, it was a cool summer evening some people pulled out frisbees or hackee-sacks and just began to have a great time.

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