Raleigh World Beer Fest 2013

Twice a year the Triangle area is graced with the appearance of the World Beer festival, one in Raleigh and the other in Durham. When we planned to attend the Raleigh event we couldn’t imagine that it would turn out to be such a perfect day for for an outside festival that focuses on enjoying everything beer.

Upon entering you can see all the time and effort that is poured into this event from the staff and volunteers from “All About Beer Magazine“. The layout was very simple and easy to navigate and we had no problem getting from one tent to another as we got a lay of the land to start. One fun fact about large events like this is, no matter how you try to prepare you can never be ready for the large number of people that are going to be attending as well and this can make for some tight spaces inside the tasting tents. However, everyone was cool, calm, and just having fun, so it was not a problem to be in the tight quarters with our fellow beer loving brethren.

With 115 breweries from all over the country in attendance, you can really go into something like this a bit amazed, but also hesitant. I’m sure there are some brave souls that attempted every beer at the event, but I feel the main focus is to go and enjoy new beers and maybe even enjoy some of your favorites that maybe in attendance. While I have had many of the beers that were brought to the event, there were still plenty that I haven’t had before so that’s where I focused. Now I couldn’t begin to go into detail about ALL the beers I had, but I promise you many brewers brought their best sellers and I wasn’t disappointed (a full list of beers is available here in PDF format).

Now, since we are a NC beer blog and it’s NC Beer Month, I want to talk a bit about how the hometown breweries went into this event. Located in two separate tents, the NC brewers had a home field advantage as they were able to bring some cask aged stuff and rare stuff that is in the local warehouses and doing timed releases during the session. From Big Boss releasing a Barrel Aged Bockscar, to Foot Hills pulling out a Sexual Chocolate (from what I heard), and Raleigh Brewing bringing by their collaboration brew with Trophy Brewing. The locals were also kicking kegs fast from what I could tell, with Mystery completely kicking for the early session. While not local to NC (yet) we also got a glimpse of the map for the upcoming Sierra Nevada brewery opening up here in NC and you can see from the picture below…That’s going to be one big brewery!

The festival doesn’t just stop at beer! Outside games (huge Jenga!), presentations, and food pairings, it is a full 4 hours with a little of something for everyone. All About Beer, with help from all the great sponsors, really do a great job with the festival and if you are a beer fan or looking to see what this “beer craze” is all about I highly recommend attending next year, or why wait…Head over to Durham on October 6th to attend the WBF event held there.

We for one had a great time!

– Cheers!

Pictures: Heather Hall