And now, a random story about my weekend:

I saw a post yesterday re: one of my favorite bands, Ice Nine Kills, and the essence of it was something like, “If you’re feeling discouraged, remember that INK has worked tirelessly for 20 years to only just now get some kind of recognition.” On the one hand, congrats to them for finally getting the acclaim they deserve, in a world of changing musical tastes and media means (streaming is killing everyone). On the other, you could interpret that as, well, maybe they aren’t that good.

ANYWAY, my point here has to do with what happened for us at this past weekend’s beer festival. Now, when I say “festival”, I wish I could clearly explain these events. Essentially, MOST of these include a number of breweries sending representation to serve 2-3 beers in tents. They usually happen in a park and either it’s an actual brewer or the distributor who pours. For the one we attended last Saturday, it was mostly distributor reps. 7venth Son, Georgia Beer company, and Halpatter all sent actual folks. I would say there were maybe 14 breweries total, including us two homebrewers.

And that is also a point of confusion because while I understand that foray, some people really don’t understand that 1. you can make beer at home and 2. there’s groups of people who gather and to do it. I.E. our local goup. Or as I always just call it: brew club. So anyway, the gist of my complaint was that they gave out top 10 brewer plaques and I was kind of surprised we didn’t get one. Here’s why: we are not amazing brewers BUT we have improved vastly since even the last year of serving where we got a lot of compliments. The beer we brought, a very pleasant and easy-drinking milk stout, got insane commendation. I’m talking, people who have brewed before loved it, people who have stomach issues with certain beers liked it, and even a guy from Michigan who said he went to the same pub for 23 years said this was his favorite beer since then.

But here’s the big one: a guy came up to us and explained that he works in distribution with a local taphouse and wants to put our beer on it. We explained that as homebrewers, we are not licensed to sell our product and while he was aware of it, he was adamant that we could. He kept asking what was stopping us and boy, is that a can of worms! But he said he has a brewing degree from Cornell and knew that was a good product, worthy of being commercially sold.

It seemed a little scammy and of course, I am always skeptical, but we gave him our info and that was that. Tons of people came back to our tent time and again because they loved the beer so much. A few people tried to buy it from us, but of course, that isn’t legal! Later in the evening when we saw they’d given out awards, sure, I was disappointed, just given how much acclaim we got. Do I need that to tell me I brewed a good product? Not at all. Would it have been nice to be recognized? Of course!

Well yesterday, Ash got a text from the same folks and we’re meeting with them on Wednesday to further discuss the details. Far as I understand it, they’re opening a new location (which I knew) and want us to be the guest tap; it kind of seems like this is a family business who seeks out new products for this place, since they rotate about 30 taps all the time. Pretty cool foray if it’s on the up and up. There may be some kind of deal where they hold the license and since we are under them, we can do this. I will report back after our meeting but this is a much bigger accolade than some tiny plaque from a small beer festival!