The weekend of the June 13th and 14th brought upon a torrential rain of the beer kind. While I was kept away from the festival due to the threat of actual torrential rain and flooding on Saturday, I made it out Sunday and honestly had a great day outdoor. I have no idea what deities the Beer Fest staff subscribe to but the days were beautiful and Sunday’s sun just enhanced the experience.
First and foremost, let’s get to the beer. As you heard on the HBF episode of our podcast their beer coordinator makes sure to bring the best of what is available in our area, and he made it happened. While many of the bigger beer companies were there, I was happy to see breweries like Texas Beer Refinery, Jolly Pumpkin, and a brewery I hadn’t tried before, Freetail from San Antonio. As an IPA fan, Freetail’s Soul Doubt was pretty amazing! Another beer highlight was Buffalo Bayou Brewing. Aside from their excellent range of beers including their gingerbread stout, Buff Bayou brought out a frozen shandy that was perfect for the hot day.
While the beer sampling lasted until 4pm,\ the music went on both days with a ton of local acts, and some big names straight out of H-Town including Riff Raff and Scarface. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to catch Jody Highroller on Saturday, but I was able to witness Scarface with a full band and that was amazing. The day was hot, and as soon as Scarface stepped on stage a light shower snuck up on us and as hot as the day was, it was a blessing and no one moved.
Tucked away in a corner was the Karbach Love Street stage. An area for relaxing and such, it featured some of my favorite acts of the weekend. Gracie Chavez, Hiram and Senior Jukebox were jamming it out. It also housed one of the coolest features of the show, a Houston beer museum. Talking to the owner of it, Houston is rich with beer history and some of the finds he had were amazing. Most impressive was an empty beer can of Grand Prize Beer’s “Charro” beer. He was explaining how it was one of the most valuable beer cans out there and he got lucky when he tripped over it walking in Memorial Park.
If you listened to the podcast, you heard that Ben & Jerry’s were bringing something special, and that they did. Free scoops of “Barbecue Peach” and “Bourbon Pecan” were available to vote on. I tried so hard to vote more than once because I couldn’t decide and they were both worth rigging democracy.
All in all, this year’s Houston Beer Fest felt closer to what it was two years ago. I know a lot of eyes were on the festival after last year, but during the festival, the new team heading up Houston Beer Fest did an amazing job. As a proud Houstonian, I feel that anything that wants to be representative of the city needs to be ass-kicking, and this year’s HBF V staff, was the shot in the arm the festival needed.
Photos by Jen Nguyen
