Anyone going to the Autumn Brew Review this year? I belive it is Sept 19th at the old Grain Belt Brewery in MPLS. The wife and I are going with another couple, both women have sober tickets so they can drive us home.

Last year it was a lot of fun. 100 breweries from all over the country each serving at least a couple beers a piece means I've got around 400 different beers to try. Last year I lost count on how many beers I tried, by the end counting was no longer within my capacity.

I'm not sure if there are still tickets available but if you are a beer lover its a can't miss event.

Bummer, it's sold out.

I may be working at it. They haven't asked yet, but I'm pretty sure they will yet.

Its a popular event so I guess I'm not surprised its sold out. There are other similar events throughout the year so keep your eyes open. Usually not a cheap ticket, I think mine was $45 this year but really not a terrible price considering I'll probably drink 10 pints worth of top notch craft beer that I wouldn't normally have access to.

quote nofish: "I'll probably drink 10 pints worth of top notch craft beer that I wouldn't normally have access to."

It's hard to appreciate a new beer when you've been going back and forth between strong, hoppy IPAs and delicate golden or blond Ales. My taste buds were fairly useless an hour into a craft beer crawl I attended a couple of months ago. Then, when the buzz set in, I might as well have left my taste buds back in my son's apartment (from where we had walked to the crawl).

I think the time (4 hours?) could be a big limitation on how much you can sample. Looking back to our experience, we should have started at the more distant locations (from where you check in). In reaching the check-in spot, we passed more distant places where lesser known breweries had little to no lines. Near the central area, Sierra Nevada and Deschutes had 20 minute lines. After about an hour-and-a-half, the lines had evened out.
The counter argument to starting with the smaller, more remote breweries is that the large ones sometimes hand out brewery doo-dads until gone. I got a nice keychain bottle opener from Sierra Nevada.

Last year at the Brew Review lines were not an issue at all. I don't think I waited in a line longer than maybe 3-4 people. The Surly booth was probably the busiest but I was still able to get a beer within a minute or two.

I do agree that after the first hour the taste buds aren't really living up to their full potential any more and it can be tough to remember what beers you liked and didn't like after awhile. To combat this they do hand out books at the entry with each brewery having its own page listing and describing the beers they served. A lot of people use them to take notes or circle beers they liked so they can remember once the beer fog sets in. A lot of people also wore pretzel necklaces to give them an easy snack to help cleanse the pallet a little between beers.

Over all its a great place to try some new beers but even once the beers start to blend together its just a fun time hanging out with friends and drinking good beer.

Looking forward to this on Saturday, looks like the weather will be perfect.

I declined going to the ABR this year. It would have been my only free weekend on my favorite outdoors month.

Which brewery do you work for? I'll stop buy and have a sip in your honor.

August Schell

Are they going to be featuring anything new or special at the Review?

In the past I've skipped over breweries like Schell when at the Review since I'm already familiar with the bulk of their standard line up. Limited time and stomach capacity usually has me chasing breweries I'm not as familiar with.

My guess is we'll have a couple sours, 155 and o-fest. Maybe pils. Or maybe chimney sweep since we're bottling and kegging it tomorrow. I shouldn't say "we" since I'm not a bottlehouse employee and I don't have to work overtime tomorrow.

As always if was a fun event and the weather was amazing. Overall I was a little disappointed in the beer offerings. You could see a very distinct trend across all the breweries. They were all loving the barrel aged beers, anything with insane amounts of citrus, and of course IPA's. If you wanted to try anything other than those three it was harder to find.

I was surprised by a sweet potato lager that was really good and drinkable. The big loser for me was a horrific tasting salted watermelon beer. It was by far the worst beer I've ever tasted. It sort of reminded me of the after taste you get in your mouth after your throw up after eating something salty. I took one sip and dumped the rest on the ground. I sort of felt bad for the ground for having to absorb the remaining beer.