The beards were packed tight in the sprinter. Three coolers, cooling and the mighty unicorn was taking us the Brewery Ommegang for a festival like I have never seen before. Three former brown distributing employees gone separate ways reunited for weekend of dig swinging drunkenness.
This was the second weekend this month I have been on the road headed to New York. I have to admit the weather was a fantastic break from the humid VA. The brewery experience around Kueka Lake was a bit underwhelming but this festival promised to hurt. My only expectation was there would be a fantastic formal dinner with the perfect beer pairings. I anticipated a lot of bottle sharing going around the camp site, but I was under selling the magnitude of the event completely.
The 90's theme smacked you currently in the face at the front gate. The Jurassic park gate, the goosebumps themed programs, and the nickelodeon themed volunteer shirts are still hilarious. We got in just in time to jump into the cocktail hour and dinner. We dropped our shit and headed to food.
Duvel big bottles everywhere, the first circus tent for dinner must have had a thousand people ready to get down. The lines for all of the appetizers were so long we chose to quickly flock to the pig table. The first course came rather quickly, and was fish. I chose not to risk my allergy, but it looked really tasty.
The meat stick, aka Scottish egg was a welcome sight and provides a fantastic greasy base for a weekend of drinking. We also had a meat pie that was a touch dry, pictured below. Everything for the dinner flowed so well, the service was perfect and the vibe was very positive. The moment a bottle was empty it was replaced, danger danger!
I was very tired, so I retreated to the camping area, set up my tent, and I went to bed. There were two different camping areas, one for industry folk, and one for the public. The tents were piled on top of one another. The next day I walked around to get the full magnitude of the festival. Jockey boxes as far as the eye could see. The picture below was right across from our general tent area. Dogfish just out of the frame to the left, left hand straight ahead, six point and harpoon to the right. The VIP tasting sessions started at 1:00 and ran until 9? The main tent dinner in was transformed into a giant pouring tent, and there was another one parallel right next to it. There must have been nearly 70 breweries trying to woo everyone. It didn't take long before my tongue was so dead from tasting. That final night the Meat Puppets played some of my favorite cuts from the 90's.
This event is the standard for beer get together and well worth the cost of admission, although I paid nothing. I really enjoyed the camaraderie of hanging with beer business peers. We have swirled around in employment for a while, as you do, and can still get together and truly appreciate this drank's ability to unite.
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