Every two weeks or so, Hop Culture attends a beer festival. It’s how we meet interesting people and publicize our magazine. Over the past six months, we feel like we’ve gotten a pretty good handle on what it takes to make a good festival, as evidenced by a previous letter from the editor: “How to Throw a Ballin’ Beer Festival”. Now, we’ve teamed up with Pittsburgh’s Dancing Gnome to throw a festival of our own.
The Juicy Brews Beer Festival (internally called the Freshie Fest) will take place in Pittsburgh on Sunday, October 1st. It’ll be different from anything the community has ever seen. Instead of getting volunteers to pour, we’re hosting the brewers themselves. Instead of tasters, we’re giving out unlimited pours. And instead of big brands, we’re focusing on our favorite small, independent breweries from the region.
Recently, I’ve read articles in BeerAdvocate and Good Beer Hunting about “festival fatigue,” but I don’t think we’re there yet, especially not in Pittsburgh. In the Steel City, we have a few big fests sponsored by the distributors and just a handful of smaller, independent festivals (shout out to The Construction Junction Big Pour and Beers of the Burgh). These smaller fests are especially great, but they tend to focus on breweries from Pittsburgh or the surrounding region. With Juicy Brews, we want to do something different. We’re filling a niche for Pittsburgh craft lovers who often have to travel to obtain their favorite beers, while also celebrating a style that isn’t particularly prevalent in our area.
So who are we bringing? From the ‘Burgh, we have Dancing Gnome, Grist House, and Voodoo. From outside the city, we have Hoof Hearted, Seventh Son, Aslin, Ocelot, Magnify, SingleCut, and Triple Crossing. We couldn’t be more thrilled to be hosting these incredible breweries, most of whom have never been served in Pittsburgh, and we couldn’t be more excited to be doing it in Pittsburgh, the city that helped launch Hop Culture.
Mark your calendars for September 1st at 12:00 PM, when tickets go on sale. Until then, you can follow Hop Culture on Instagram. This is one event that you won’t want to miss.
Stay strong, stay true, stay fresh, stay fly,
Kenny Gould
Editor in Chief
What We’re Reading
“You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”
— Secrets of Closing the Sale, by Zig Ziglar