2012 St Paul Summer Beer Fest

This past Saturday, I visited the Minnesota State Fairgrounds for the 4th annual Saint Paul Summer Beer Fest. Over the past 4 years, I've only missed one occurrence of this large beer tasting event. This year, there were 103 breweries in attendance from all across the country. Of course, Minnesota was well represented with 26 breweries.

There was much beer to be tasted while listening to the live music playing throughout the course of the event. I tried some brews I loved, some I liked, some that were OK, and some that were just plain bad. I am happy to say that the bad were a huge minority.

My past experiences at beer events like this (not to mention my own personal efforts to taste as many beers as possible) meant that I was already familiar with a majority of the brews available. This caused me to seek out the smaller number of beers/breweries I hadn't tried before, which is what I love to do.

I'd like to mention 2 breweries (amongst the newbies) that stood out in my mind. You should keep your eye on them, as I think they should do pretty well in the future:

1) - Third Street Brewhouse is a new brewery in Cold Spring, MN, and is a division of Cold Spring Brewing Co. I had been hearing good things about their brews and I was not disappointed with any of the three I tasted. And with fun beer names like Lost Trout, Rise to the Top, and Bitter Neighbor, along with a well built website, it looks like they've got their marketing well in hand, too.

2) - Hinterland may not be a new brewery per se (founded in 1995), but they are new to the Twin Cities area. This Green Bay based company entered our market within the last 3 months, and I'm sure they're working hard to make headway in this extremely busy beer climate. I had purchased a 4 pack of their saison a few weeks ago and loved it, so I was excited to see if their other beers were well made. Once again, I was not disappointed. All the brews were tasty and enjoyable.