Shenanigans With Dave: Newburyport Brew Fest

Dave and I skipped our weekly daytime shenanigans because we had a special trip planned.

Last night, Doug and I took Dave to the Brewfest at Yankee Homecoming. Each year, the city of Newburyport puts on a two week long rollicking festival filled with happenings, music, events and the awesome Brewfest. We bought our tickets online last week, and I'm glad we didn't wait because for the second straight year the event sold out. We got there pretty much right at 5 when the shindig got underway, and I figured we'd be dragging Dave out at the time of closing at 9pm. This kind of thing is right up his alley.

Dave and Chris, the king and queen of shenanigans.
Dave has Clown Shoes Lubrication; Christine is sporting Clown Shoes Clementine

Brewers from all over the area were represented:

Brooklyn Brewery

Cape Ann Brewing Company

Clown Shoes

Craft Brewers Alliance

D.L. Geary Brewing

Gritty McDuff's

Ipswich Ale

Magic Hat Brewing Company

Oskar Blues Brewery

Red Hook

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company

Shock Top Brewing Company

Smuttynose Brewing Company

Tröegs Brewing Company

Tuckerman Brewing Company

Wachusett Brewing Company

Widmer Brothers Brewing

Woodstock Inn Brewery

We started with a visit to Clown Shoes, which is locally brewed out of the Mercury Brewing Company in Ipswich. Mercury also brings us Ipswich Ale, who were also represented at this event. Dave and I both like to support the locals and figured we'd start in our own neighborhood. Dave had a Lubrication and I had Clementine. Two more different beers were not served side by side at the fest, that's for sure. The Clementine was like sunshine in a glass, almost like a breakfast juice that you could sit and have with your cereal if you were so inclined. The Lubrication was flavorful, rich, dark, deep, like oil fresh from the container.

Sidebar Note:
I am posting a second entry on this, as I have a lot of thoughts on what Clown Shoes is doing. Click here later if you want to read it.

Doug went over to Woodstock Inn and had their Raspberry Rascal, which he said was too sweet and cloying. If he wanted a slice of pie he'd eat a slice of pie. Dave and I agreed when we tried his sample. I went to Tuckerman's and had their Pale Ale while Dave had their Alt. Very good. Both were very tasty, and above all, very cold. Which was good because it was getting rather hot under that tent.

Dave and Doug were like kids in a candy shop, and I was following them around with the camera, taking pictures and enjoying the scene. The Pete Kilpatrick Band started playing, and they were great. Wonderful originals and some great covers. The perfect match of jam band coolness and lovely New England craft brews, under a sunny Newburyport sky.

We hit several other tables, from Gritty McDuff's (one of Dave's favorites from Maine), Ipwich Ale, the lovely and wonderful Troegs brews. Dave said to me "What is here that is NEW, that we've never HAD before." I'd never had Oskar Blues, so we tried them and Dave insisted "No, what kind of beer, not which brewery, have we never had before."

Pretty much every type of beer that was floating around was beer that we'd had in our lives. But we were soon to be surprised.

Cape Ann Brewing Company was serving up their Greenhorn Double IPA. Now, I've had Double This and Double That, but I don't think I've ever had anything that was this perfect tasting. I had a lovely talk with Meredith, and she introduced me to her husband Jim and their partner in crime, Tom.

Dave was equally impressed with this one, and we knew we'd be back to that tap.

We headed down to Geary's and to Brooklyn Brewing Company. I've pretty much had the Brooklyn Summer a million times. It is my go-to summer (which in the land of Sam Adams is kind of a heretical thing to say). They had a few beers on tap, but one caught my eye because I'd never heard of it. The Sorachi Ace. Brewed with special hops crossed between British Brewers Gold and Czech Saaz, this was almost like champagne. Light, refreshing, so flavorful, bubbly. Wonderful feel in the mouth and really pleasant, dry finish.

Sadly, they ran out before we could come back for another visit.

Between the Sorachi Ace and the Cape Ann Brewing Company's D-IPA, we were in heaven. We declared them both the winners, or, the king and queen of Brewfest.

We sat in the grass and watched people, talked beer, laughed. Dave loves to people watch so he was in his element.

The band was rocking, the all people were happy, and so were we.

After a final visit to the Smuttynose table, we decided it was time to go, before everyone else got ready to go. We made a quick stop into 10 Central for some appetizers and then headed home.

As we were leaving, several Beerfest folk (identified by their bracelets and the fact that we'd been circling one another for four hours so faces get to be familiar) were headed in. Newburyport must have been beer central for the next couple hours after we rolled out of town.

Things that I wish were different:

Benches. Everyone was sitting in the grass and the dirt, on giant rocks that lined the parking lot, on parking lot kerbs, and a great many people looked uncomfortable. The website should have either recommended we bring folding chairs (standing for 4 hours while sampling beer isn't cool) or they should have put the orange fence barrier back a little tiny bit further into the grass area so that more people could sit comfortably on level ground that wasn't filled with parking lot gravel.

Tables: they had very few of the tall tables for standing about, leaning on, chatting' round. A true biergarden atmosphere would have had at least a dozen more of those inside the tent.

T-shirts for sale: the volunteers all had lovely t-shirts. Dave mentioned that he would have paid at least 20 bucks for a commemorative Beerfest T-shirt as an attendee. We were at a pub a few weeks ago and someone was there with an Amesbury MA beerfest shirt and it made Dave very envious. None of the vendors were selling shirts, it was all about pumping the beer out of the taps, so this would have been a good money maker as shirts are rather inexpensive to produce.

My friend Stu told me that he thought Newburyport Brewfest should just be changed to Brewburyport for this event. I have to agree. THAT would make a fun T-shirt.

Following are some more pictures of the event. All told, we'll go back next year, with our folding camp chairs or a blanket or something, and enjoy it all over again.