1st Annual Nordeast Big River Brew Fest

The Northeast Homebrewers Association (NBA) has been on the hunt for more members, mainly because we need to reignite some enthusiasm and generate fresh ideas for how the club can be successful – and maybe we even need to spend some time first defining “success” for us. In pursuit of new members, and in order to get into the 1st annual Nordeast Big River Brewfest free of charge, one of the founders of NBA got our club a booth/table at the event which was held Saturday 10/15/11 at the historic Grain Belt Brewery’s bottling house in Northeast Minneapolis. Unfortunately, the guy who coordinated it ended up being busy that day, but a few others from the club were able to man the both in his place.

We setup right next to the Northern Brewer table, so it was cool to speak with a few of those guys about brewing and the new location that will be opening near my house in Southeast Minneapolis in the coming weeks (yes!). We also managed to snag a few email addresses of interested homebrewers, so on the whole I think our presence there was as successful as we could have reasonably hoped. Also, it was a beautiful day so it wasn’t too terrible sitting at our location outside.

I was able to venture inside to snag a few swigs from some breweries. I had a short conversation with one of the four guys that started Minnesota’s new Fulton Brewery (Ryan Petz, company President) told him how excited I was for them to open their downtown Minneapolis brewhouse soon and mentioned how awesome it would be for them to have BBQs outside their brewery before Twins games (as they are a 5 min. walk from the ball park). He agreed and said they’ve already been in talks with the Twins and other neighborhood businesses to attain necessary approval for events like that.

Fun times, good beers and good conversation on a crisp fall day.