The Bar Towel

The LCBO has finally announced the full details about the Ontario Craft Beer Festival taking place at their Summerhill location at the end of the month. This is the largest craft beer event ever presented by the LCBO, and hopefully it will be the first of many full-scale Ontario Craft Brewers events to be held at Summerhill and other LCBO locations:

Friday, July 28 | 4:00 - 8:00 pm
Saturday, July 29 | 2:00 - 6:00 pm
Sunday, July 30 | 1:00 - 5:00 pm
LCBO SUMMERHILL ONTARIO CRAFT BEER FESTIVAL
Join us over three days to sample some great beers from the Ontario Craft Brewers. The following brewers will be in attendance: Amsterdam Brewery, Better Bitters Brewing Company, Black Oak Brewing Company, Brick Brewing Co. Limited, Cameron’s Brewing Company, Cool Beer Brewing, Great Lakes Brewery, Heritage Brewing, King Brewery, Lakes of Muskoka Cottage Brewery, Mill Street Brewery, Niagara’s Best Beer, Skeena Brewing Co., Trafalgar Brewing, Walkerville Brewing, and Wellington Brewery.

this is good news-i will be there

Does anyone know if there is a cost for this?

Thursday wrote:Does anyone know if there is a cost for this?

I don't know for sure, but I suspect it will be free admission, with a nominal cost for samples.

I went today, and was very impressed at how they organized this. You get eight samples of local brews, at no cost whatsoever, and they created a chilled environment on the patio. The food samples were also pretty sweet (jalapeno cornbread, jerk chicken on plantain chips, etc).

Most of the beers are nothing you haven't tried before, but it was more than worth it to try some new ones, chat with the owners, etc.

There will be different offerings Saturday and Sunday, and I'm thinking I'll check them all out.

I stopped in yesterday, and as shintriad mentioned, this is a great little event. Not a lot new for beer geeks, but it's a good chance to expose the OCB products to the general public who might not try them otherwise.

At first I was disappointed that only selected breweries are there each day, but in retrospect, I think it was a good idea. Each customer gets 8 - and only 8 - sample tickets, so limiting the number of brewers in attendance each day to a small number makes it a little less intimidating to newbies, I think. Plus it gives people an excuse to go back every day and try different stuff if they're so inclined.

After the sampling, I was browsing in the beer room, and I overheard an employee saying that sales of OCB beers had shot up on Friday and Saturday thanks to the festival. Hopefully, that'll spill over to some year-round sales.

We went on Saturday and then again on Sunday since we were in the area. I have only two criticisms with one of which solved on Sunday. The first one was how loud the band was on Saturday. Far, far too loud for such a small area. It made for difficult talking amongst friends and the brewery people. On Sunday there was no band and the music was a fair bit quieter. Good thing too as I had a nice conversation with the lady at the Heritage booth whose name escapes me at the moment.

My second criticism, it's only a slight one since I understand it was a small venue and the first time for this event, is the limited number of brewers there each day. I do wish the venue was bigger so that they'd all be there. Ah well, it was free so I can't complain too much about having to make a second trip.

Oh, it was relatively easy to get more than eight tickets. People were just leaving them behind or were offering their leftovers. We took advantage of that.

If anyone is interested in trying either Nicklebrook Green Apple Pilsner or Trailhead Lager on tap, they're currently at Rebel House.

I stopped by Friday night and enjoyed my brief time there. Chatted with Ken and booth babe Jenn at Black Oak, enjoyed the food samples.

I thought it was great for what it set out to do - introduce people to craft beer, it was a bit slow for the hardcore (ie. Bartowelers) who already know about all this stuff but I thought it was well done over all. Could have been a bit larger space since it was a tad cramped, especially on a hot day like that but that was my only real complaint. Well done! Hopefully this will find more people drinking OCB products in the future!

JerCraigs wrote:I stopped by Friday night!...

So I did a Bar Towel search for "hardcore" + "babe" + "hot" but all I found was a post about some beer festival at Summerhill...