Are Beer Festivals Back?
Oslo Craft Beer Festival, May 6, 2022
In early May, when I stepped into Oslo’s DOGA main exhibition hall it had been 149 weeks (more than a thousand days) since I’d attended a beer festival. That marks the longest gap between fests—by far—since my first back in 1991. It was a strangely emotional return. My first European beer fest, it shouldn’t have felt familiar, yet it did. A buzz of excitement, like an electrical current, crackled through the jubilant crowd. People arrived in small groups, but before long they had begun to clump together in larger clusters (make your flocculation joke here). They made connections with each other and the breweries pouring beer. They left with smiles. It all seemed … normal.
The week I returned, Eoghan Walsh discussed a particular Brussels beer fest in his “50 Objects” series, and I received an email announcing the return of Oregon Brewers Festival this July. The maturation of the market, Covid, and the ongoing development of beer culture all put me in a reflective mood. Festivals aren’t the most central feature of our beery enthusiasms, but they are in many ways an important indicator. Are we ready to get back to normal?
Focal Points
Craft beer still hasn’t reached critical mass in Norway, so the Oslo Craft Beer Fest had the feel of early American fests, where people were just there to explore and expand their horizons. These festivals marked the 1980s and 1990s in the US, functioning in many ways as an introduction to beer. It offered a low-risk opportunity for customers to sample a few ounces of beer at a time; these fests became survey courses of what was out there. For the Norwegians in attendance, a teku full of hazy IPA or barrel-aged stout offered a racy thrill of the future.
Festivals can also have a galvanizing effect on a local community, bringing attention to a style of beer or a region, or even a new way of experiencing beer. In his piece on a mid-teens Brussels festival, Eoghan writes that Vini Birre Ribelli helped the city grow up. It only ran for four years, but birthed descendant festivals:
“These new festivals, while possessing their own aesthetic, shared some similarities. A focus on small, independent, and interesting producers. Taking food seriously - sometimes even roping some of Brussels’ biggest culinary stars. And their location, on or near Brussels’ canal, confirming the inexorable shift westward of Brussels beer’s centre of gravity. All of which Vini Birre Ribelli did first.”
It’s hard to get a handle on trends when they’re loose in the market. Drinkers can’t be everywhere. Fests canonize these trends, though, by creating a platform for festgoers to witness them collectively. In Oregon, the OBF allowed people to see that there were a lot of little breweries out there. It played no small part in helping establish momentum for small breweries and give them credibility as members of an emerging phenomenon.
Later, fests became much more specialized. The events that could attract small cities of people gave way to village affairs celebrating farmhouse ales or cask-conditioning or fruit-infused beer. These were no less beloved—and in some cases, the focus allowed fans to sink deeply into their bliss. By far the event I anticipate most each year is the fresh hop fest, which is a capper to the most Northwest of seasons. I can’t imagine fresh hop season without the fest as its showcase. One fest I’d love to visit is Barrel and Flow, highlighting Black breweries, in Pittsburgh. In a case like that, people are there to celebrate brewers as much as their beer.
All of which is to say that as local beer culture changes, fests do, too. They are wholly adaptable. Some stick around as fixtures of culture (like that little event they have each fall in Munich), while others shine brightly before fading as trends move on. Yet fests themselves endure, and this raises the question I’ve been thinking about. Why, no matter what’s going on in beer, do we love a good fest?
The only thing better than a Tilquin lambic is one handed to you by Pierre Tilquin.
Hey Look, People!
At the top of the post, I mentioned the current of electricity that runs through a fest. That’s not a beer thing, it’s a people thing. You feel it whenever people get together in a group. The vibe may be boisterous, as at a concert, or imbued with hushed anticipation, as at a play. The most acute demonstration of a group’s presence was John Cage’s “4:33,” the performance in which musicians didn’t play their instruments. Instead, they sat quietly and allowed the audience to listen to the ir own hum. Often wrongly described as a performance of silence, it was instead a performance that stripped away the performers so the audience’s role would be more obvious.
In a similar way, the point of beer festival would seem to be the beer. But it’s possible the beer is really just the excuse to get the people together. When I imagine showing up to a venue and finding one or the other absent, people are the far greater loss. I could happily spend a couple hours hanging out with friends sans beer, but the idea of standing around sampling beer alone seems beyond bleak.
I don’t think we’ve quite come to terms with the costs of Covid’s isolation. Even when infection rates dropped enough for regular life to resume, social activity hasn’t snapped back. Restaurants and pubs aren’t as busy as they were pre-pandemic, and, at least in Portland, they turn into ghost towns by 9pm. I think our social muscles have atrophied, and we’ve forgotten how essential it is to come together.
Beer fests are hardly the most important reason to gather. In a world of Zoom gatherings and the masquerade of connection social media provides, we sometimes forget—I sometimes forget—how important it is to see each other. Many of you may not have been back to a fest. With luck, you’ll have an opportunity this summer. If the virus cooperates, I invite you to find a festival somewhere near home and have an evening out. You may find some good beer along the way, but the thrum of of the crowd and the good conversation will make it special. That’s always been the case, I think, but maybe now we just see it more clearly.