When we are visiting an area, we usually find a website that shows the area’s activities and special events for the time we will be staying. In looking for stuff in the greater Phoenix area, we stumbled upon the Phoenix Brewers Invitational Festival. We had found a few breweries in Las Vegas, but in general we haven’t visited too many of late. So we thought we would take in a festival that would have beers from a number of craft breweries. This festival advertised that nearly 60 breweries would be participating. We envisioned that each brewery would have its own tent pulling samples of their entire range of brews. Well, it wasn’t exactly that way. A lot of Arizona breweries did have their own tents but for the rest they were represented by their Phoenix distributor who only had one tap per brewery. Just the same, it was a very impressive array of breweries and brews. For $25 you received a souvenir mug and 12 tokens that each secured a 4 ounce sample of beer. Between us we didn’t get too many overlapping samples so we probably tasted about 20 different brews. Our overall favorite was a gingerbread beer that had a clear but subtle taste and aroma of gingerbread.
People who are fans of highly hopped beers are referred to as “hop heads”. And of course there were a number of hoppy brews at the festival. In case you are wondering what a hop head looks like, we captured this picture for you. “Go ahead, make my day hoppy”.
It was a great outing. It was our first foray into downtown Phoenix. We did a little needed shopping and enjoyed a lot of great brews with a good crowd of fellow beer enthusiasts.
Doesn't get much better than Phoenix and a beer festival. Glad you enjoyed your day!
ReplyDeleteSounds like my kind of event and a quart and a half of beer should have fixed me right up.
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