The SAVOR salons were posted just in time for advance tickets to go on sale yesterday, and we are delighted to see that in addition to many of our beer heroes (we’ll call them beeroes) from some of the best breweries in the country, several local beer and food gurus will be featured at the event. The inclusion of DC bar directors and chefs is especially welcome after our recent complaint about this year’s brewery list missing some key regional players.

ChurchKey Beer Director Greg Engert, Birch & Barley Executive Chef Kyle Bailey, and Granville Moore’s Executive Chef Teddy Folkman are among the experts who will guide big spenders (salon tickets cost an additional $30 above the regular $95 ticket price) through private paired tastings and panel discussions at the Brewers Association event in May.

From the SAVOR site:

Join Greg Engert, Beer Director of Neighborhood Restaurant Group, as he discusses the exciting craft of pairing real food and real beer. Engert will draw upon his experience presiding over the tasting menus of Rustico Restaurant & Bar, and—more recently—Birch & Barley/ChurchKey, (where he is also a Managing Partner) to pair four rare American Artisanal brews with a four course-tasting menu designed by Birch & Barley’s Executive Chef, Kyle Bailey. This is your opportunity to see how the appreciation of craft beer has been elevated to the next level in our nation’s capital, and has found itself perfectly placed at the tables of this white-hot restaurant.

Brewery Ommegang teams up with Bobby Flay-conquering chef Teddy Folkman for Savor 2010. Teddy is the well-known executive chef and co-owner of Granville Moore’s Belgian Beers and Gastropub. Chef Teddy will prepare his special fare with one Ommegang ale and pair it with yet another. Sit back and enjoy as Ommegang and Chef Teddy infect the crowd with the tasty art of pairing of Belgian-style food and ales. Finally, Ommegang will cap the beer and food pairing with a special comparison tasting of a brand-new Ommegang exclusive beer; a beer unavailable anywhere except the brewery.

All of this year’s salons look good, but we are not likely to shell out that kind of money for any of them . . . though the Rare Barrel Aged Beers salon with Odell Brewing Company Founder Doug Odell and The Bruery Founder Patrick Rue is a hard one to pass up. We’ve been on a barrel-aged beer kick lately, and Odell and Bruery are two of our favorites, but we’d honestly rather spend our precious SAVOR hours out on the floor tasting beer and talking to folks, especially since you can always listen to the SAVOR salons for free on your own time as podcasts on Craft Beer Radio.

What would you do? It might not matter that much since pre-sale spots for salons are pretty much gone already, and we expect the tickets they have reserved for the general sale next Wednesday will go just as quickly.

Photo by snapzdc used under a Creative Commons license