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NY Brewfest & David Katleski, President of NY State Brewers Association
The New York Brewfest takes place this Friday from 5PM-10PM at the South Street Seaport. Highlights will include a commemorative glass, 300 styles of beer, 4 live bands, all in the open-air seaport setting. Brewfests are tricky events to both organize and participate in, so for this event, we at BeerMenus decided to offer some insight.
To learn more about the logistics involved in the brewfest, I had the pleasure of speaking with David Katleski, president of the New York Brewers Association, the organization responsible for protecting and promoting New York State Breweries and the group that sanctioned the NY Brewfest. David explained that the purpose of the brewfest is to serve as an educational tool to showcase New York state breweries by allowing people to sample beers, many of which are difficult or impossible to get in the City.
Making a brewfest an education tool and not a keg party is a challenge, and in your best interest. David explained that the organizers work hard to get the correct balance of the number of ounces poured in each sample, the number of people present, the number of brewery booths, and the number of kegs/bottles/cans supplied. The idea is to make sure people really sample the beers, pace themselves with consumption, and take full advantage of the variety of beers at the event. This year there will be 3x as many bathrooms as last year and there will also be 3x as many points of entry so it doesn’t take forever to get into the event.
The organizers do their best to create an environment suitable for mature beer sampling, but no matter how experienced you are with brewfests, an all-you-can-drink event with hundreds of beers is difficult to navigate. The organizers do their best to help, but in the end it is on you to make the right choices. From our experience, aside from staying hydrated and eating beforehand, it helps to start with lower ABV beers and beers with more subtle flavor. This way you don’t burn your palate with hops or lose the ability to taste from drunkeness. As much as you will be raring to go with Imperials and Doubles after a long week, you will be kicking yourself if you only remember what 3 beers taste like after paying to be in an all-you-can-drink oasis with 300 beers.
Ticket proceeds go to the NY Brewers Association to protect and promote New York state breweries and as David said, the tickets will definitely sell out, so buy your tickets online here so you don’t miss out.
