Apparently, the month of April is when Beer Festivals get going. I had never been to a Beer Fest before so I thought I’d round up some compadres and give it a go. The Orange County Beer Fest was held at the Newport Dunes in Newport Beach, California. The cost was $45 dollars to get in and you could sample as many and as much as you wanted. Since the beer was unlimited, and I know my friends and I have a hard time moderating, we decided the best and responsible thing to do was to Uber-it there and back. Great idea, since parking was limited and a nightmare.
Old Beer Fest Poster
Local breweries set up canopies where they poured you a “Dixie-sized” cup of their beer. They usually had a couple of flavors to choose from. There must have been upwards of 50 plus breweries pouring there finest.
Food was not included in the price, but there were food trucks lined up to tantalize your fancy; everything from sushi food trucks to trucks serving burgers. Some of the festival-goers wore pretzel necklaces to nibble on with their beer.
Live music added to the festival atmosphere. Thousands of people were there. The gates opened at 6pm and we got there at 6:30. We could try many kinds of beer without much of a line. The later it got, the longer the lines; which was a major bummer, although maybe it helped considering we weren’t sampling as much and therefore our brains wouldn’t be as foggy the next day.
Newport Dunes was definitely a beautiful setting for the Beer Fest. Sipping the suds with sand between your toes doesn’t get much better than that!
