First Annual Knoxville BrewFest 2011

I won’t lie, I am one of those beer snobs that often longly looks to our sister state of North Carolina with envy because of their awesome breweries, less restrictive beer laws and their awesome festivals. We’ve written about those festivals and you’ll likely find us at one or two in the coming months. While we do have our own events here in good ole Knox-vegas that highlight craft beer, we’ll always welcome another with open arms. Today we’ve got those open arms wrapped around Knoxville Brewfest which will be held on June 25th, 2011 from 4pm-8pm and I think it’ll be a bit different than what we’ve come to expect from events like this around here. Now, before I go any further, I want to take a moment to point out that all the net proceeds from this event will go to Cure Duchenne which, if you’re not aware, is a form of muscular dystrophy that attacks the muscles in young boys. As we’ve stated before here at KBS we are a BIG supporter of any events that go to support a cause and especially one as noble as Cure Duchenne.

The Knoxville Brewfest will be held at the Southern Railway Terminal at 306 Depot Avenue which I’m a little ashamed to say that after living here 11 years, I didn’t even know this place existed. This looks like a great location though and a perfect place to enjoy a beer festival with 1500 other beer-loving Knoxvillians. Yep, that’s right, tickets are limited to 1500 of which 125 are set aside as VIP tickets – and I’ll get to that in a minute. The point here is that these tickets are limited and they WILL sell out. You can either run by the Bearden Beer Market to purchase or you can get them online here.

As the regular tickets are currently $36 and the VIP tickets are cranking in at $75 you may be wondering what that gets you. Well, as so wonderfully stated to me yesterday think of the VIP tickets as “front row” at a concert. Yes, I get there isn’t a physical “front row” at a concert BUT what this does mean is that you get in an hour earlier than everyone else (3pm), you get your own special parking area, a VIP area with it’s own food, bathrooms (this is what sold my wife on our purchasing of these tickets), and a special Bearden Beer Market tasting area with beer that Chris Morton himself will have personally selected. We’ve also heard rumors that there will be some high grav beer in this area – not making any promises but did want to throw that out there. Also, this is a great way to schmooze with a lot of the brewers and other beer-related big dogs that will be in attendance.

Speaking of brewers we’ve already heard that we’ll be seeing Sweetwater, Sam Adams, French Broad Brewing Company, Terrapin, Yazoo, New Belgium, Knoxville’s own Marble City Brewing Company, Depot Street, Thomas Creek and many others. The beer list is up and you can check it out here. The guys that are making this happen have others in the works and will post to their Facebook page and Twitter account as things get firmed up.

If you have any questions please give us a shout in the comments below and we’ll seek out those answers the best we can. Hope to see you all there!!!