Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Beer, The Cause of, and Solution to...

This Saturday, I will be spending the early part of the day celebrating my friend Brad's bachelor party. Party organizer, Nick, cleverly came up with the name "Bradchelor." Truthfully, I'm a little jealous that I did not come up with that myself. Not by coincidence, Brad is marrying the sister of my wife. I'm looking forward to a good time before I head up north for next week, but I am a little bit intrigued by the daytime events of the party.

This weekend in Ypsilanti, the Michigan Beer Fest is taking place. The festival runs from Friday to Saturday as direct competition to the Ann Arbor Art Festival, because the same kind of people who would go to the art festival would definitely be Beer Fest attendees. I'm very happy to be going to celebrate Brad, but I've never attended a beer fest and I'm not quite sure what to expect. It is $35-$40 for a ticket, and with that price, the fest-goer gets 15 3 oz. samples of beers from many of Michigan's fine independent brewers. That's the approximate equivalent of a $10 beer, so I'm intrigued by what else is going to be going on at the festival. Have any of my extremely faithful readers attended a similar event in Michigan? I'm generally not even that big a fan of beer, but I am going to do my finest to appreciate each of my 45 ounces of Michigan beer on Saturday. I do wonder, though, where does the rest of the ticket cost go? I'm happy to support Michigan businesses, but I do wish it was a little more transparent how the cost of the ticket gets distributed to these businesses, because I'm pretty sure it exceeds the cost of materials and logistics for the beer distributors.

Anyway, my comments have dropped to negative (the blogger service is so disappointed by the lack of commenting they've started penalizing me by removing old comments) so I expect little from all your jerks, but I'm looking for recommendations for beers to try, what else I should expect from the event, and if there is some sort of beer festival song I should learn prior to my attendance. No matter what, I'm pretty sure Maureen is going to be driving us up north on Saturday night. Party on, Bradchelor.

4 comments:

Nick said...

I wish I could take credit for the "Bradchelor", but that singular distinction lies with Jon, Brad's brother. A truly exceptional term.
I also have not been to the Beer Fest and questioned the price, but most folks who have been said it is basically unlimited beer, and they just can't advertise it as such. The brewmaster at Black Lotus yesterday confirmed this, also. Some places actually pour 3 ounces, and take your token, but that seems to be the exception...

Comment +1!

BobA said...

The only thing I know about beer is that I need it very cold and accompanied by a slice of pizza.

CraigF said...

my advice -- try as many of the beers as you can.

oh, and my expectation of your taste buds is that you should go with Hefeweizen and Belgium beers, because they are the fruitiest while still being manly beers.

but you should try them all and figure out what you like.

Dave said...

make sure to heckle Colon for me and congrats to Brad.