Rocket City Brewfest 2015: The View From Minnesota

On a recent trip to Huntsville, Alabama to visit my wonderful mother-in-law we were lucky enough to score tickets to the seventh Rocket City Brewfest (thanks Bill Fowler and the folks from OTBX!)  Being the super beer geek that I am, being in my wife's hometown on the exact weekend that they were hosting their beer festival was an amazing stroke of luck.  Or fate?  I already posted my blog entry on our visit to the recently opened Old Town Beer Exchange HERE, so feel free to check that out for some back story--especially on how much the beer scene has changed over the past several years.  As an outsider only making my way down every few years, the changes are even more dramatic!

The Brewfest itself was a two day affair over May 8 and 9 of this year.  The event is primarily a fund-raiser for Free The Hops--an Alabama based lobbying and education organization with lofty goals of improving the craft beer laws and attitudes in the state.  The website for the event is one of the best such sites I've seen--featuring good explanations, lists of the beers, and a countdown to the next year's event.  They also hosted an app for smart phones this year so you could figure out what brewery was serving what beer.  Traditionally the first (Friday night) session tends to a younger/rowdier crowd, while the Saturday late afternoon session is a bit more laid back.  We missed the first day, but were able to make the second day--probably perfect for our style.



I can't speak to previous year's events, but this was a great beer fest and run very smoothly.  Located on the grounds of the old Depot building, one has a good view of some of the old city, and its an easy walk to some of the downtown area.  After getting your ID checked, wristband (featuring a slightly tasteless advert for DUI defense), and taster glass, you are let loose on the grounds.

The brewery booths were a bit more spaced out than many such festivals, allowing for easier maneuvering and line management.  The local breweries almost all had their own tented booths, most with a separately run line for buying swag.  This is something I wish MN brewery fests would do, very few bring any glasses, hats, T-shirts, signs, etc. to sell us tipsy consumers.  Wasted opportunity!  Non-local and import breweries were serviced by combined booths, featuring beers from all over.  I focused more on the local stuff, but was excited to find the rare Tilquin Geueze from Belgium being poured at one station.  We also saw several of the breweries from North Carolina where we had just spent a week prior.  We also bought an awesome hand-made glazed ceramic growler with giant Grolsch swing-top from local Southern Growler--check them out HERE.

Let's talk water.  This particular fine spring day boasted temps over 90 degrees, but luckily some clouds drifted in to give us a little cover from the direct frying heat of the Alabama sun.  Every pouring station had a 2.5 gallon jug of potable water with a spigot as well as a dump bucket.  This made rinsing your glass out between and IPA and an Imperial stout a breeze!  Also if the beer in your glass was nasty, it was easy to dispose of the evidence.  Not that I had that happen very often.  This is in contrast to the otherwise well-run Minnesota Brewer's Guild events where they usually have only two dump/rinse stations for the entire festival.   There was also a booth handing out free bottles of ice cold water!  These guys know how to deal with preventing dehydration.

And food?  Oh, there was plenty of food available, though they were handled through annoying tokens.  Our favorite food option was the fantastic Sugar Belle Cupcake Truck that was serving a bunch of treats made with local craft beers.  Monkeynaught IPA cupcakes?  Heck Yeah!

We had a chance to try a lot of different beers, with extra attention paid to Alabama and other southern brews of course.  Some arcane law prohibits free samples of beers in the state, so each station has a bucket requesting a penny a pour.  If you forget, you can give a quarter to another bucket and count this as credit for 25 pours.  Strange.  Star local brewery Straight To Ale (celebrating it's 5th anniversary) had a constantly rotating line-up of over 20 beers--I really enjoyed most of them.  They also had a poor guy dressed in a suit (90 degrees!) and made up like a devil pouring samples of their 5th anniversary Belgian Quad from a tank on his back!

Pour bastard...

I enjoyed most of the things I tried from Yellowhammer.  One of the biggest lines in the fest was for Salty Nut, but all four of the beers we tried from them were just average to my palate.  We also got served beer from taps set into the side of a firetruck--best kegerator ever!

Going regional, we tried no less than 4 peanut butter beers!  I have brewed one of these with fair success in the past, but have never had a good commercial version.  Our favorite of them was the Rocket Republic brown ale that was then run through a randall filled with peanut butter chips.  Yum!  We actually went back for more of that one.  The rest of the RR beers were quite tasty as well--and I feel all the happier to display their rocket shaped tap handle that my niece Anna sent to me last year.

Overall this was a very well-run, and well-maintained beer festival.  For variety, water accessibility, and smoothness it was one of the best I've been to.  Top that off with the fact that almost every beer there was new to me and I was quite happy!  The beer quality was very good, but I would say that they are perhaps a bit behind where the general state of Minnesota breweries are these days.  We do have about five times the number of breweries to choose from here though...

If this came to emergencies there would be a LOT more false alarms...

The festival ended at 8 PM with dusk starting to cool things off outside.  My wife and I had snacked on amazing cupcakes, but were ready for something a bit more substantial to fill our bellies, so we walked a few blocks to Below The Radar.  This is a brewpub (one can see the fermenters through glass from the bar) but at the time we were there, the house beers were not on tap yet.  Instead they had a good selection of tap and bottled beers with a lean toward local/southern beers.  The food was fairly standard selections for a brewpub or bar, but the quality was above average.  The staff seemed friendly, but at least one server had no clue about beer at all...something they really need to fix if they are planning on being a real brewery!  

A great day spent in Huntsville, and far more impressive from a craft beer standpoint than I would EVER have guessed the city to become.  I'm excited to go back and see how things progress!

Duluth Beer Scene: All Pints North 2013

This year Sj and I managed to get the six-pack of tickets from the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild which included two tickets to Winterfest, ABR and All Pints North.  Since last year we were forced to buy scalped tickets to Winterfest at the last minute, we wanted to make sure we were prepared this year, and were willing pay the price.  The bonus tickets to All Pints North just gave us the excuse we needed to schedule our first summer trip to Duluth! 

Last year was the inaugural festival and apparently they had low attendance.  Being the first year I think people didn't know what to expect and were less likely to take a trip all the way up to Duluth and take the risk.  It may also have been scheduled against another big beer event.  This year, between better PR, word of mouth from the previous year, and the six-pack tickets, the festival sold out.  Many folks from the Twin Cities were in attendance, including my friends Shawn, Randy, Andrea, and many more.  The whole weekend most of the breweries and pubs we visited were especially busy with the hoard of city-folk in town for the festival.  Very smart move for a tourist destination!  The night prior to the festival Surly did a tap take-over at 7 West (a local beer bar with lots of taps) and we caught wind of it before most of the other invaders.  We were able to get samplers of Surly Seviin, Syx, Darkness 2012, Smoke 2012, and Hell before the festival had even begun! 

The festival was held at the large Bayfront Festival Park, walkable from the Fitgers Hotel we were staying at.  Though I admit we had the free shuttle service drop us off.  The weather was hot and muggy, with a deeply overcast and ominous sky above us.  Despite the threat of rain we only received a few cooling sprinkles during the festival itself.  A cluster of festival goers were already in line when we arrived, many preparing pretzel, cheese, and beef-stick necklaces for wearable sustenance during the fest.  In line we happily ran into Thad and Elise, folks we have met at other fests and at Happy Gnome beer dinners.  It was nice getting to hang out with some people we knew already.  Some other people I know were in town for this and we never actually ran into them during the festival!  At the sound of the bagpipes (traditional for starting Minnesota beer events) we all calmly moved forward to receive our booklets and taster glass and get into the festival grounds.

There were four big tents with all the breweries situated underneath.  A large bandstand hosted some mediocre music once the festival got going.  There were smaller booths hosting MNBeer.com, Northern Brewer and some more sponsors.  A special tent had educational programming throughout the fest: like a Better Beer Society blind sensory tasting; a talk by beer historian Doug Hoverson; and Michael Agnew of A Perfect Pint.   One big gripe I have about this and most beer fests we have been to in Minnesota is the lack of dump buckets and rinse stations.  There was only one trough with running water for the entire festival to use.  I like these events so I can taste as many new beers as possible, and don't want to get hammered by drinking the whole 2 oz pour from each brewery--I like to taste, dump the rest and move on.  Being outside, we could dump on the ground, but the area soon ended up muddy and sloppy.  More buckets people!

On to the beers!  I'm not going to lie, we tasted a lot of beers that day and I stopped keeping track about an hour into it.  As a result my memory may be vague on some details, but I'll post some high and low lights of the beers we tried.  Since I had tried other local beers in the previous days I will talk more about those beers in my other blog posts.  Hence the absence of Bent Paddle on this list...

1) Because we had tried most of the Surly beers the previous night, the only one I had to try was their collaboration with Three Floyds called Urine Trouble.  "For that cat peed on the Christmas tree aroma."  Yup, as an owner of three cats, I think this is well named.  I did not really like the brett mixed with the strong hops though, and am in the minority by not loving this beer.

2) Schell Imperial Grain Belt Premium in cask and dry hopped.  I wanted to like this.  I really did.  But it was nasty and bitter and forced me to go all across the fest to find that one rinse station.

3) Blacklist Beer:  A new one in Duluth, featuring Bob McKenzie on the brew staff.  All Belgian styles but needing a little refinement I think.  The Or De Belgique was very tasty, but a bit under attenuated and sweet for my tastes.  The Imperial wit with Kaffir line had a lot of flavor, but maybe too much lime flavor.  I will certainly be watching for more from these guys over time.

4) Borealis Fermentery:  A tiny brewery from Knife River (just north of Duluth) that also puts out Belgian styles in 750 ML bottles only.  The Mon Cherries Belgian dubbel is my favorite from them, very well balanced.  The Raisin Liason Saison was more than just a cool name, mixing unusual yeast and fruit flavors.

5) Dangerous Man:  Chocolate and Coconut milk stouts were both fantastic, with the coconut being one of top three from the entire festival.  These guys are bringing it strong. 

6) Fitgers Brewhouse:  More on them in my upcoming  Fitgers blog post.  I had tried many of the beers at the brewery but they still had several new ones to try here.  Both Sj and I thought the Gooseberry Gose was one of the best of the festival, only being beat by our favorite from Town Hall--Hoops brothers smack down!  Red Wheat and Blue was a pretty tasty concoction as well.

7) Fulton:  War and Peace is one of my favorite coffee beers and I was happy to try it again.  Maybe twice.  They also brought a version of their Libertine Imperial red aged in 2 Gingers Whiskey barrels that is even boozier and tastier than I remember.  These two beers have really increased Fulton in my estimation.  Keep them coming!

8) Hammerheart:  A new brewery opening in Lino Lakes and focused on Celtic and Nordic culture.  These guys had a great display featuring a Nordic wooden shield, excellent artwork and tattooed servers.  All of the beers were very interesting, featuring oak aging, smoke, habeneros, etc.  They had an impressively long line throughout the festival.  I tried them all and was intrigued by the ideas, but feel that they maybe should get their base recipe styles a bit more refined before adding all the crazy stuff.  I had this issue when I first started homebrewing, wanting to add all sorts of fruit and spices and things to my beers.  Watch them though--and they have a cool aesthetic.

Celt-Punk Hammerheart!

9) Jack Pine:  Brewmaster Patrick Sundberg has really started making some great beers in his small Baxter, MN brewery over the last year.  Disclaimer: I contributed a small amount to his successful Kickstarter campaign, and this was the second time I have been able to try his beers.  All the beers he is putting out are incredibly clean and well balanced, perfect for his location and main clientele.  The Dead Branch is probably the best cream ale I've had in years, and the Duck Pond is easily better than Newcastle.  Check them out but don't expect Uber beers.

10) Pour Decisions:  Contining their tradition of making rare and extinct styles of beers to appeal to the beer geek in all of us, we sampled a great Gose (Salinity) and Verity (a tart and refreshing ale aged in a wine barrel.)  Always something cool to try here.

11) Rock Bottom:  Another day another brewer.  Pio has apparently moved on and Larry Skellenger from the Iowa Rock Bottom has taken his place as brewer.  His Evergreen Red IPA was a very nice and subtle spruce ale, and a good start to a new career move.

12) Town Hall:  Always one of my favorites, these guys continually impress me.  The mango IPA was probably the first IPA my wife has ever tasted that caused her to go back for her own sample!  And Russian Roulette (Belgian chocolate Imperial stout anyone?) was my favorite beer of the day.  They tied for best beer with Bent Paddle for it! 

Sj and I actually finished a bit before the fest was over, cutting ourselves off long before we got sloppy.  Restraint is good.  We headed over to Tycoons, the new upscale restaurant by the folks who own Fitgers Brewhouse.  They had some good Fitgers beers on tap, a few that were only at the restaurant, and very good food.  The smoked fish appetizer platter was a huge hit at our table and we ended up splitting two.  The place is very large and takes up much of the historic city hall building.  There is a large upstairs the was taken up by a post-beer-festival party for the brewers when we were there.  They have a small downstairs bar (located in the old jail area) that is worth just checking out if you can:  exposed brick, dark corners, and a creepy/cool speakeasy feel.

Overall, All Pints North was an amazing festival in a cool outdoor venue.  I would love to come back to it again in a year or two.  Other than not enough BIFs and dump/rinse stations I think this was one of the best festivals I've been to.