Beer festivals are a common feature on the social calendar of increasing numbers of American beer drinkers. The grand-daddy of them all, of course, is the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) which is held every September in Denver, CO. It is an event that attracts approximately 60,000 people who can sample from 3,500 beers from over 700 breweries. I am not sure how many beer festivals there are in the United States. The website BeerFestivals.org list 361 for 2016, but I suspect that the number is higher. Beer festivals provides brewers with an opportunity to showcase their product while giving attendees  an opportunity to sample a wide variety of beers over a short period of time.

Earlier this month my wife and I volunteered at the 10th Annual Glass City Beer Festival that was held in the city we call home –  Toledo, Ohio. This was our second year volunteering for this event. It is a lot smaller than the GABF of course – thirty-six breweries, two cider mills, and one meadery offering over 230 beers, ciders, and meads. In addition to providing patrons with an opportunity to sample some fantastic beers the evening was a fundraiser for two very worthwhile local organizations – Camp Courageous & The Arc of Northwest Ohio and the Northwest Ohio Hemophilia Foundation. Camp Courageous and The Arc work with and provide recreational and educational opportunities for children with developmental disabilities, while the Hemophilia Foundation focuses its energies on assisting those impacted with bleeding disorders. These two very worthwhile causes are why my wife and I are volunteers and not just attendees at the Glass City Beer Festival. The festival, which attracts 2,000+ attendees, takes somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred volunteers to put on. The largest volunteer need is for individuals to tend booths and pour beer. This is the task for which my wife, myself, and two friends volunteered. Our shift ran from 6pm to 8.30pm. The booth to which we were assigned had beer from Goose Island Beer Company and Blue Point Brewing Company and cider from Uncle John’s Cider Mill. Both Goose Island and Blue Point are craft breweries that were purchased, and are now owned by,  Anheuser-Busch. A-B purchased Goose Island’s Chicago brewery in 2011 and Blue Point’s New York brewery in 2014. Uncle John’s Cider Mill is located in St. Johns, MI.

Doors opened at 6pm and the first hour of the festival was restricted to folks who had purchased VIP tickets. Each booth had a couple of beers that were available exclusively to VIP guests. At our booth the two brews were Matilda, a Belgian Strong Pale Ale brewed by Goose Island and Russet a hard cider from Uncle John’s. While the first hour was not terribly busy we did have a steady flow of customers with most wanting to sample the Matilda. Samples were three ounce pours. At 7pm the doors were opened for general admission and things started to get considerably busier. In addition to the two VIP brews we had four Goose Island beers, one Blue Point beer, and four Uncle John ciders.

One of the things I noticed throughout the evening was that several folks assumed that I worked for Goose Island and/or I was from Chicago – I do not and I am not. If I did work for Goose Island it would, in fact, be illegal for me to serve Goose Island beer at the festival. Ohio’s three tier permit system is designed to keep separate the functions of brewer, beer distributor, and beer retailer. In the case of the Glass City Beer Festival the two non-profit organizations,  through the acquisition of the necessary legal permit, were functioning as beer retailers for the duration of the festival. And brewers are not legally permitted to pour beer that has been purchased by any retailer. Common sense would dictate that having brewers pour beer at festivals would allow them to share their knowledge about their beers with curious patrons. As it was there was a Goose Island representative who hung around our booth and did make himself available to answer customer questions.

In addition to assuming I worked for the brewery some customers also assumed that I was from Chicago and was simply in Toledo for this event. This resulted in a couple of interesting interactions during the evening – one festival patron wanted to know if there was indeed a place called Goose Island in Chicago. There is of course. Goose Island is an artificial island on the Chicago River. It was formed in 1857 as a result of an excavation project. Goose Island is fairly small, only 160 acres in area (approximately 1.5 by 0.5 miles). Goose Island developed as center of manufacturing and by the late-1880s was home to tanneries, breweries, soap factories, two grain elevators, and eleven coal yards. It has been suggested that the name Goose Island resulted from flock of geese brought there by Irish immigrants. The original Goose Island brewpub, opened in 1988, is not actually on Goose Island; although it is located less than a mile north of the island.  On the company website there is actually no reference to the brewery being name after the island although its close geographic proximity to the island suggests that it almost certainly must be.

But I digress. After our shift was over we joined the regular festival goers and started to sample some beers. As volunteers we had received a punch ticket that allowed each of us six samples. These samples were not complimentary, however. Ohio law has restrictions on the giving away of beer. Only retailers with a D-8 permit may do so and even then sample sizes are restricted to two fluid ounces. So the two dollars that we had paid for the privilege of volunteering covered these six samples. Anytime I attend a beer festival my intention is to sample beers that I have not tried before. The Glass City Beer Festival was no exception. I tried some new beers with my favorite (by quite a distance) being Brown Ale’d Girl, a brown ale brewed by North River Brewing Company from nearby Wauseon, OH. The brewers (who alway have Van Morrison playing in the background whenever they brew this ale) add coconut in the mash, the boil, and the fermentation. As someone who is partial to coconut I really enjoyed this brew. So overall it was a great evening – an opportunity to volunteer and drink beer for two worthy causes. We are already looking forward to the 2017 Glass City Beer Festival.