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A Pumpkin Beer Festival In Seattle To Start The Halloween Season

Pumpkin season is upon us. Most places are now filled with orange displays, the convenience store is pushing their pumpkin cappuccino things, and of course there’s plenty of candy. We’re all about celebrating Halloween even if it is still an entire month until the big day, especially if it involves some special holiday beverages. One brewery in Seattle knows that there’s only one way to truly get the season underway, and that is with a pumpkin beer festival.

The Elysian Brewing Company is putting the final preparations in place for The Great Pumpkin Beer Festival. Things will be taking place this weekend, October 10 and 11, at the brewery’s Capitol Hill location. There will be plenty of pumpkin beers to help lager lovers get their fix and celebrate the season. The brewery will be honoring nine of their own beers, including The Great Pumpkin Imperial Pumpkin Ale, Hansel and Gretel Ginger Pumpkin Pilsner, and Night Owl. There will be concoctions from other breweries as well including Southern Tier, Rock Bottom, and Dogfish Head.

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Oktoberfest In The US Means Electing A 'Miss Buxom'

We thought we did a pretty good job rounding up the 5 Things You Have To Know For 2009's Fest during our 2008 Oktoberfest post-mortem, but apparently we left out the annual Fremont Oktoberfest festival up in Washington. The three day beer-soaked event, which includes over 70 brews on tap and bills itself as being "for kids and adults of all ages," includes a cigar lounge, copious amounts of alcohol, and an appropriately-named "Miss Buxom" Contest.

The festival kicks off on September 18 and goes until the 20th, with Miss Buxom being choosen at 7pm on the first night. They say you don't need to be female to enter, though we're guessing it kind of helps since the winner is chosen by audience applause. You must be wearing "traditional German attire with a Fremont twist" even to enter, which we're taking to be a euphemism for "cleavage."

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Tags: Labor Day Travel / Beer Festivals / Beer Travel / Drinking Travel / Events / → All Tags

Have A Hoppy Labor Day Weekend In NYC

For those living in New York, the Labor Day weekend usually requires an unfortunate trip out of the city to attend Uncle Herman’s annual family barbeque. However, if you’re lucky enough to not have genetically mandated plans, start thinking about attending this year’s Great World Beer Fest. This is its seventh year running and it used to be called Brewtopia, so we're thinking they've got things down to a sudsy science by this point.

This year’s festival of all things beer will be held at the Park Avenue Armory, and they’ve added an extra day. Craft porters, ales, and lagers will be available on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of this year’s holiday weekend. If you do plan on attending, the most important decision will be choosing what session to enjoy. There’s evening sessions on Friday and Saturday, and afternoon opportunities on Saturday and Sunday. The only drag is that tickets are a pricey $60 per person.

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Drink a Beer, Save a Tree in Colorado this Summer

Colorado is home to one of the nation’s highest concentrations of beer geeks, and probably has more nature geeks than anywhere else too, so it’s only natural that the state would hold America’s first solar-powered beer festival.

The 7th Annual Craft Lager Beer Festival comes to Manitou Springs, Colorado on August 8 and 9, and $35 gets you an all-you-can-drink pass to more than 60 craft brews, including lots of locals like Colorado Spring’s Rock Bottom and Pott’s of Fort Collins. Plus, 14 different CO breweries collaborate each year to brew up a few barrels of “Warning Sign,” a super-strong small-batch lager made only for the festival.

And eco-conscious drinkers can do all of this guilt-free, because the theme of this year’s festival is “Drink a Beer, Save a Tree”—all proceeds from the event support efforts to preserve open space and parks in Manitou Springs and Colorado Springs. We'll raise a glass to that.

Related Stories:
· Craft Lager Beer Festival [Official Site]
· Beer festivals coverage [Jaunted]
· Beer travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Craft Lager Brew Festival]

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Seattle's Beer Festival Welcomes Drinkers and Their Dogs

Seattle is famous for their weather and their coffee, but they've slowly been making their way onto the beer scene as well. After all, they aren't too far away from Portland, a city that has more breweries than anywhere else in the country. To celebrate this new beer fame, they’re welcoming one and all to the Seattle International Beer Festival.

On July 3-5, hop heads and beer bellies from around the country will gather at the Seattle Center Mural Amphitheatre to test out the latest and greatest from the world of beer. There will be over 150 varieties on tap and in bottles just waiting for you to sample them. We just hope there aren’t too many coffee-flavored porters hanging around, because those are less than tasty.

Tickets are $20, a price that includes admission, tasting glass, live music and ten beer tickets. Unfortunately unlimited samples aren’t available here, so you’ll need to buy more tickets for $1 each if you’re still thirsty. Also, depending on the “swank factor”—their words not ours—your sample can cost between one and four tickets. For those early risers, there’s a Happy Hour between noon and 1:00 pm where you’ll get five extra beer tickets.

Once you’ve paid for your ticket, you are welcome to visit all three days of the festival; there’s no re-entry fees. So feel free to bring your dog the next day—they’re welcome inside— so you have someone to gripe to about your hangover.

Related Stories:
· Seattle International Beerfest [Official Site]
· Trips We Love: The Year in Beer [Jaunted]
· Beer coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Official Site]

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Trips We Love: The Year in Beer

Now this is our kind of gap year! A California couple spent the entirety of 2008 traveling the globe with their itinerary fully dictated by one thing: Beer.

Chris Nelson and Merideth Canham-Nelson, the sudsy minds behind thebeergeek.com, declared 2008 "The Year in Beer," and spent $30,000 exploring beer festivals and local craft brewers from Anchorage to Erlangen. Their entire trip is documented with photos and videos on their website, now a comprehensive resource for where to find the best brews in just about every beer-centric locale throughout North America and Europe.

The duo also shared their best bets with the Silicon Valley Mercury News. For a domestic trip, they recommend the Oregon Brewers Festival in Portland (coming up July 23-26). Abroad, they were taken with Cologne's Kölsch bars, where guests are served in 7-ounce glasses that are constantly refilled until you signal you're done by placing a beer mat over the glass. Sounds like a dangerous system to us, but we'd certainly be willing to try.

Well we're thirsty now! And most definitely ready for a Year in Beer of our own, if we only had an extra $30,000 lying around (hint, hint to any potential sponsors).

Related Stories:
· The beer tourists [Mercury News ]
· Best bets for beer travel [Mercury News]
· Brits Complete 24-Year Pub Crawl [Jaunted]

[Photo: balajijegan]

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No Busch Light At The St. Louis Brewers Heritage Fest

It’s pretty clear that the folks in St. Louis take their beer pretty seriously. After all, this is the proud home of Budweiser, as long as you just forget about that whole InBev buyout thing. That’s why it’s a pretty safe bet to predict that the 2009 St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival is one of the must-do drinking fests of the year.

There’s three different schedules over the weekend of June 5 and 6 that all take place within Forest Park, but unless you’re hardcore we’d only recommend throwing down for one of them. Tickets start at $30 and cost $35 on the day of the event. It’s a pretty good deal as it grants you access to unlimited sampling of over 60 different beer styles, live music, and a commemorative glass.

Brewmasters will be on hand from some of the nation’s most well known breweries, as well as some smaller ones. We’d head straight to the Trailhead Brewing Company booth, in hopes of downing a few samples of a hoppy ale. Just remember to bring a couple bucks in case you get the beer munchies, as there’ll be quite an assortment of food vendors as well.

Related Stories:
·St. Louis Brewery Heritage Festival [Official Site]
·Beer coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Official Site]

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Get Toasty This Weekend At The Los Angeles Beer Festival

America is in the throes of the worst recession that any of us have ever seen. Times are tough. We're all giving up luxuries and cutting back on expenses.

Enter this weekend's Los Angeles Beer Festival, offering you the opportunity to replace your yuppie oenophilia and with an afternoon of grain-based bliss. The weather will be a crisp 65 degrees, the sky will be a cloudless blue, and people will be stumbling from booth to booth in a state of blurry delirium.

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Beautiful, Bizarre Beer Week in Philly

We've been to plenty of beer festivals in our day—too many, trust us—but we've never seen a brew celebration take over a town quite the way Philly Beer Week does. We were down there for the inaugural event last year, and it seemed no one in the whole city could talk about anything but brews.

For its second outing, which starts Friday, PBW has suds-lovers salivating with nearly 700 different events that go way beyond just tastings. Here are a few of our bizarre-o favs:

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Back of the Envelope Travel Guide: The Del Mar Scene

When you think of horse racing you immediately think of the big guys like the Kentucky Derby or the Belmont. Or maybe you just picture grumpy old guys bickering over horses and swapping stories.

But at the Del Mar Racetrack and Fairgrounds, outside of San Diego, there's so much going on that they call it the Del Mar Scene.

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Tags: Fall Festivals / Beer / Beer Festivals / → All Tags

Fall Festival Travel: Seafood, Jazz & Brew on Hilton Head

After filling up on many of the culinary delicacies offered at this year's crop of state fairs, you may be interested in something a little more refined. That's where the Seafood, Jazz & Brew Festival on Hilton Head Island comes in. This year, the festival takes place on the evening of Friday, September 12 and runs through the next afternoon.

As you relax near the water at Shelter Cove Community Park on Friday, you'll enjoy some jazz while feasting on some of the best local seafood specialties the island has to offer. (Spots to try include Ocean Grille, CQ's and Antonios.) Admission to the evening's events is $50 per person, and you should act quickly as last year sold out.

Come Saturday afternoon the action's at Shelter Cove Harbour. There will be a home brew contest here, and $10 will get you four "tasting tokens." For the extra thirsty, you'll be able to buy two additional tokens for just a buck.

Related Stories:
· Seafood, Jazz and Brew 2008 [Official Site]
· Fall Festivals Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Savannah Grandfather]

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Boozy Travel: World Beer Festival

You still have two months to plan your visit to Durham, North Carolina for the 2008 World Beer Festival. Presented by All About Beer magazine, the festival is celebrating its 13th year in the Tarheel State. The event takes place on October 4 at the much upgraded home of the Durham Bulls, The Durham Athletic Park. So after one too many, you can live your dream of being a professional ballplayer, even if you're only in the minor leagues.

There are two sessions for the festival, one in the afternoon (for dorks) and one in the evening (for the cool kids). Each guest will receive a commemorative tasting glass and then will mosey around the festival grounds to enjoy sample pours from more than 150 breweries from around the world. Live music on the main stage along with many food vendors will help you relieve your beer munchies without missing a beat.

Tickets for the festival start at $40 and go on sale on August 20. They go quickly, so if you're planning a visit to the festival, set the alarm on your new iPhone. If you want a classier experience, pony up for the $75 VIP tickets: They grant you access to some extra beer selections and complimentary food.

Related Stories:
· World Beer Festival [Official Site]
· North Carolina Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Not a photo of the World Beer Festival: free-ers]