Yes, you read that right. I’m sure this idea will be scoffed at by a few, but I am here to tell you why these people are wrong.
First, the backstory. The beer industry is seasonal. Beer sales are usually busiest in the summer – people will drink more beer when outside than inside, generally. Beer sales also tend to get very busy right around the holidays, as beer drinkers are attending holiday parties and enjoying beers with friends and family around the dinner table.
In Western New York, January and February tend to be the slowest time of the year for beer sales, as people have drank their fill over the holidays and also spend less time outside when it’s colder. In order to stave off the winter blues, there tends to be a few more beer festivals organized in the winter.
Since the start of 2020, our region and its breweries have put on a series of festivals that have kept area beer drinkers in such delight that it’s hard for me to imagine anywhere in America where the diversity and quality of beer has been better.
Here is a summation of beer festivals that have occurred in the Buffalo region over the last six weeks. (I’ve also highlighted what Big Ditch brought to the festivals – since you’re reading this on our blog, after all.)
Buffalo on Tap – January 11 at the Buffalo-Niagara Convention Center. Not only is this the largest festival on this list, it’s actually the largest beer festival held in all of New York State. While this festival is the least specialized, and certainly the least intimate, it serves a purpose. With a $30 general admission ticket price, and 75-150 different breweries to sample from, I like to think of this as an “entry level” beer festival, so those who are new to craft beer can try a lot of different beers for a fairly low price. (Big Ditch brought our signature and seasonal beers to this festival: Hayburner American IPA, Low Bridge Golden Ale, Make Me Wanna (Coffee and Cream) Stout, and Berry Vision Sour Fruit Beer.)
Brewers Invitational – January 26 at New York Beer Project. At the 4th edition of this festival, area brewers were encouraged to present some of their experimental beers to a smaller and more intimate crowd. There were tons of flavored stouts and IPAs at this festival. Host New York Beer Project included two different barrel-aged beers, both of which were excellent. (Big Ditch brought a couple of limited-release pilots: a sour peach IPA and a chocolate peanut butter porter.)
Barrel Jam – February 1 at 42 North Brewing Company. This is the area’s first barrel-aged beer festival, and featured beers from both Western New York as well as a few national breweries. As the only brewery in the area that possesses a specific building just for barrel-aging beer, host 42N had some special beers featured. Their Kriek was my favorite beer of the festival. (Big Ditch included some beers we packaged in late 2019 – Dry-Hopped Barrel-Aged Beautiful River Saison, and Mexican Chocolate Bourbon Barrel-Aged Towpath Imperial Stout.)
Barrel Jam at 42N
Thee Barleywine Festival – February 9th at Community Beer Works. Just when you thought that an all barrel-aged beer festival was specialized enough, CBW hosted an even more specialized festival. Their festival was all about barleywines, which is a stronger, more malt-forward ale. There were no beers less than 9 percent ABV served at this fest, and several of these beers were barrel-aged as well. CBW, our host, brought THREE different barleywines to their festival – wow! An amazing thing about this festival was how unique all of the offerings were. You would have thought at an event like this, you’d be drinking the same thing over and over again, but each beer was just a little different than every other beer due to either recipe or process. (Big Ditch brought one of our last remaining kegs of The Tower, our barleywine aged in Tommyrotter Distillery bourbon barrels.)
Thee Barleywine Festival at CBW
Brickyard Cask festival – February 15 at Brickyard Brewing Company. We didn’t actually attend this festival; as much as we would have liked to, there were just too many other things going on this day for us to support it. (Brickyard, however, was nice enough to allow us to send them a keg of our Tart Cherry Barrel Aged Beautiful River Saison to serve during the fest.) Cask beer is a fairly unique way to offer craft beer; it’s usually served slightly warm and with less (naturally occurring) carbonation than normal draft or packaged beer. Cask beer in America also serves as a vehicle to create variants of “regular” beer with interesting adjuncts, be it hops, fruit, spices, or sweets.
Collabeeration Festival – February 16 at Resurgence Brewing Company. This, for sure, was the most unique of all the festivals held in the last six weeks. This festival was organized by the Buffalo Beer Geeks (via one of the moderators, Joe Yager), which is a Facebook group of enthusiasts who wanted to team up with area brewers to make unique beers. The proceeds from the festival were then donated to charity (specifically, ECMC.) This allowed area “geeks” to have input into the brewing process, which resulted in a slew of extremely experimental beers. (Big Ditch submitted, with their geek group, a double IPA brewed with Galaxy and Nelson hops and secondary fermented with NYS Diamond grape juice. The beer was possibly one of the best IPAs we’ve ever brewed.)
Hopfest – February 22 at Gene McCarthy’s/Old First Ward Brewing Company. Gene’s/OFW has done this hoppy (i.e. IPA) winter festival for several years running now. (Big Ditch brought a keg of “Five Alive” IPA to Hopfest, a hazy IPA brewed with Citra, Amarillo, and Motueka hops, and mandarin orange, lemon and lime zest.) I thought this event was a fitting end to this list of festivals that (to recap) covered entry-level beers, experimental beers, barrel-aged beers, barleywines, cask beers, even more experimental beers, and hoppy beers.
Organizers of the respective events said they wanted to add something unique to Buffalo’s beer experience.
“It’s important that beer drinkers push their boundaries,” said John Cimperman, managing partner at 42 North. “The Barrel Jam provided attendees with a much different experience than most beer festivals.”
Ethan Cox, president and chief instigator at CBW, is arguably the biggest barleywine lover in WNY. “I hope WNY becomes a ‘center of excellence’ when it comes to this style,” Cox said. “We perfectly achieved our goal of a quality, intimate event for like-minded aficionados.”
Yager, the Facebook page moderator and self-proclaimed beer geek, echoed these sentiments. “I have never been to nor heard of a festival like this one, a festival where every beer was a creation between local beer drinkers and the breweries they patronize,” he said. “I wanted to push the envelope and add a layer of depth to our local beer scene. Buffalo can boast it’s the first city to host a festival like this (as far as I’m aware). And that’s special to me.”
Pushing the envelope, becoming a center of excellence, providing a unique experience… see the common thread here?
If you enjoy craft beer, and you went to all of these festivals, there isn’t a single style of beer you couldn’t have enjoyed at least once. Is there anywhere else in the country where this type of craft beer diversity was displayed in such a short period of time?
Another stunning thing about these festivals was the amount of camaraderie on display. Not only are area brewers inviting other breweries to show off some of their best beer – don’t take this for granted, as the craft beer industry is becoming increasingly competitive – but the Collabeeration festival shows how engaged the local industry is with its community of supporters. This also shouldn’t be taken for granted; how many companies do you know that let their customers design a product for them? Now think that this happened at almost 30 breweries in less than a few months. It shows how special our local industry is.
Finally – and you really had to be there to believe this – at many of the festivals I attended, almost all the beer was very, very good. It’s clear that the quality of beer in our region has improved a lot over the last few years, as established brewers have honed their techniques and newer brewers have infused a greater amount of creativity into the scene. I can’t imagine being anywhere else in the country where you could have had so many great beers in such a short period of time. (This doesn’t even count “The Festival” by Shelton Brothers Importers amongst some of the best Buffalo beer festivals held recently. The very presence of a world-class beer festival like “The Festival” in Buffalo shows how far we’ve come to earn the respect of the world when it comes to knowing good beer.)
Corey and I visited New England back in late 2015 to find out: “What do they have that we don’t have?” We didn’t think New England’s beers were A LOT better back then, but we did think that the beer culture was more evolved compared to Buffalo’s at the time. Attendance at the above festivals shows how much interest our local community has in the beers our local breweries have to offer.
I’m not saying that Buffalo has the best breweries in the country. What I am saying is: when you account for the overall quality, camaraderie, diversity, and sheer volume of different kinds of beers and breweries in our area, it would be hard to imagine many other areas of the country where you can experience all of the above like you can here. If you’re an enthusiast of craft beer, you should feel lucky, proud, and overall, really, really excited to be living in Buffalo right now. I believe Buffalo belongs in the conversation of best beer destinations in America. Don’t you?
(Special thanks to Will Cleveland for editing assistance - thanks Will.)