Some of us have been drinking all week, but tonight the real party starts as Savor officially descends upon D.C. The Brewers Association, the trade group putting on the craft beer and food event, is taking over the National Building Museum for two nights of revelry. The great hall will be flush with reps from 72 American craft breweries collectively pouring more than 1,700 gallons of beer for an estimated 4,000 ticketed guests across two sessions.
Add in more than 80,000 small dishes and that’s a lot of ground to cover in less than four hours. For über-geeks like me who look to Savor as a time to expand the list of beers you’ve tried and breweries you’ve become familiar with, focusing your efforts is a must.
After glancing over the participating brewery list for this year’s event, I was blown away by the impressive array of so many of the nation’s most well-regarded brewers. (Drool alert: The beer list is pretty sick as well.) But below is my checklist for the evening, comprised completely of breweries I’ve never tried and many I’ve never even heard of. Had any of them? Which breweries and beers would be on your list?
- *Funkwerks, Inc., Colorado
- Yazoo Brewing, Tennessee
- Nebraska Brewing Company, Nebraska
- Trinity Brewhouse, Rhode Island
- Willimantic Brewing Co., Connecticut
- Elm City Brewing Company, New Hampshire
- Crown Valley Brewing and Distilling Company, Missouri
- Bayou Teche Brewing, Louisiana
- Lazy Magnolia Brewing Company, Mississippi
- Bohemian Brewery, Utah
- Caldera Brewing Company, Oregon
- Fort George Brewery, Oregon
- Laurelwood Brewing Co., Oregon
- Oakshire Brewing, Oregon
- Standing Stone Brewing Co., Oregon*
*Note 1: I’m totally cheating with the first three, as I’ve heard great buzz about each of these new breweries and expect to be wowed by their offerings.
*Note 2: Notice a pattern? It looks like I’ll be booking a beer trip to Oregon soon to make up for this gap in beer knowledge.
For more info on the breweries attending Savor this year, check out the complete list, as well as DCBeer.com‘s ambitious brewery profile series.
For those of you without tickets to the event this weekend, sorry about this torturous post, but don’t forget you can take advantage of many of the satellite events that D.C.’s bars and restaurants are hosting.
Photo by Eddie Arrossi Photography, courtesy of the Brewers Association