Septemberfest: ze American answer to ze Oktoberfest

Hello friends! Thanks for demonstrating your loyalty and showin’ your face again here at Best of Fest after a brief hiatus. Lauren is still living like a mountain man in Oregon, while I continue to roam the lands of good ol’ California in search of festivals. And beer. Both of which brought me to my first beer fest since my last beer fest, Septemberfest. 

 

photo courtesy of Drink Eat Play

If a stranger asked me what my favorite festival of all time is, I probably wouldn’t let them finish their sentence before shouting “Oktoberfest” and launching into an oration about how hospitable the Germans are, what wonderful food they make, how it Oktoberfest truly is the “happiest place on earth” and how it was the best weekend of my life. But if they asked me what my favorite festival in California is, then we have a different story.

How great thou brew: San Diego International Beer Fest

First of all, let me apologize for the serious lag time on this post. With the 4th of July weekend and the departure of my festing partner (we will get to that later), I failed all of you patiently awaiting the rehash of The San Diego International Beer Festival. But ALAS- the time has come. With a good degree of confidence, I can say that we have molded ourselves serious connoisseurs of the beer festival by this point, and the SD Int’l Beer Fest on June 26 was yet another notch on our belts.

Leading into the fest, we were pretty amped. It had an impossibly beautiful roster of brews and a serious amount of them. To be exact, we’re talking 388 beers from 156 breweries from 22 countries (via Zuvaruvi). If you were going to give a go at sampling all 388 brewhahas, you would have to sample 1.6 beers per minute. Given that the pours generally equal 3 oz. at a beer fest, that would equate to 1164 ounces of foamy goodness in your belly. Clearly, we anticipated a shit show.

Berry, berry quite contrary: 27th Annual CA Strawberry Festival

1984 CA Strawberry Fest Poster

Let me take you down, cuz I’m going to… Oxnard, where strawberry fields seemingly do go on forever and produce a buttload o’ red deliciousness every year. Exactly how much deliciousness? In peak season, the Ventura county area ships out 10 MILLION pint baskets daily and is responsible for a whopping 27% of California’s strawberries. Not surprisingly, in 1984 some local folk put on their thinking caps and found a way to celebrate this bountiful harvest and capitalize on it all at the same time– a fest!

According to the handy-dandy information booklet, the California Strawberry Festival “ranks among the nation’s top outdoor festivals, contributing more than $3.5 million to local charities.” A quick glance at their website makes it clear that this fest is big, professionally organized & very well attended given the beautiful web design, go-green initiative (including the FREE Strawberry Express Shuttle!), and massive corporate sponsors (Budweiser, Ford, Smuckers, and Coca Cola). I thought I was in festiheaven.

Frisky are we? Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival

Stairway- Speyside Cooperage by David Russell (via Facebook)

Scotland: home to the Loch Ness Monster, Annie Lenox, Fat Bastard, bagpipes, tartan kilts and of course, whisky. As the national drink of Scotland, whisky holds a special place in the hearts of her residents and culture. Its name is derived from the Gaelic word ‘uisge-beatha,’ meaning ‘water of life,’ and if any beverage is good enough to be given this weighty designation, it’s definitely worthy of a festival. Case in point: the Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival.

For the past eleven years the whisky honors have been celebrated during the first long weekend of May in picturesque Speyside. As one of the five main regions of Scotland, Speyside is home to over HALF of Scotland’s whisky distilleries, so it’s no wonder that these folks decided to pull in some tourism with a whisky fest. At any given time Scotland houses an average 18.5 million barrels of maturing whiskey, with lovely Speyside enjoying the greatest concentration of malt whisky of any Scottish region; therefore, I think it’s safe to say that Speyside is practically bathing in this tasty spirit.

99 Taps of Beer in a Day: LA Beer Fest 2010

Sony Pictures ft. LA Beer Fest!

There are times in one’s life that one must grow up, move on, and say, “been there, done that.” Beer festivals, however, are NOT those times. Though I’ve been to a few now and can proudly boast that I actually recognize most of the breweries and even understand what kind of beer it is I’m drinking, I can honestly say that the LA Beer Fest will not be the last of the sort for me as I am in no way ready to give up brew-festing.

For those of you that have never been to a beer festival, I will outline some proper essentials that will help you recognize one when you see it. First, we’ll start with location.

Beer fests must equal happiness, and happiness generally equals sunshine, so therefore, beer fests must be outside to fully succeed. Also, the outdoor setting is key in that there is guaranteed beer spillage and potential effects of overindulgence (you know what we mean). In the case of the LA Beer Festival, the Sony Pictures lot proved to be an excellent venue. Seeing as the whole place is one giant set of a mini city, it felt like you were an extra in a film titled “Drunk People.” Tents lined the “streets,” and though human traffic jams were inevitable, no one cared because they were, of course drunk.

here we go!

Ya I'm freeeeeeeee, free fallin'!

The next beer fest necessity is live music. LA Beer Fest featured two different bands on Saturday; the first, Petty Cash, a Tom Petty and Johnny Cash tribute band that played during session one, and the second, 40 oz. to Freedom, a Sublime tribute band. Two giant thumbs up to Drink Eat Play – the Los Angeles-based events company that puts on LA Beer Fest in addition to many other LA area festivals/events all year long – for their music choices. If there’s one thing drunk people love more than music, it’s music they can sing to, so the tribute bands were the way to go. “Free-fallin’” was oh-so appropriate.

Beer guzzling & Cheese cutting: Cheesefest part deux

Most find that the best way to start a Sunday morning is with a leisurely brunch, strong coffee, and elastic-waisted sweatpants – that is, when there isn’t a cheese festival in town. Eating our delicious Moroccan eggs a la Aunt Teresa, our lovely hostess, almost felt wrong as we imagined the brick of cheese that would rest in our stomachs at the end of the Sunday marketplace. The sad thing was, we didn’t even know the half of it.

"Say Ahn-Deeve!"

Cheese-loving folk lined up early to enter the tents, practically salivating with each glance inside. Rows of tables housing fine artisan cheeses and their counterparts (wine, beer, crackers, chocolate, sausage…) were waiting to be sampled, savored and purchased.  We started out slow sampling some crème fraiche (for the novice: fraiche= fresh), endives (another tricky one: AHN-deeve) with blue cheese, pecans and a drizzle of honey—umm… yum! — and a few Fortress Vineyards selections.

Cue salivation.

Introduce cheese gelato and Lagunitas brewery and suddenly, this was a whole new ball game. Flavor exploded into our mouths as we sampled Cici Gelato’s cheesy goodness, and we’re not talking cheesy in the traditional sense. Cool and creamy with a slight bite, the Pt. Reyes blue cheese blend sent us spinning with ideas of beautiful dinner parties topped off with inventive gourmet desserts ensuring compliment after compliment.

The Cheese Doth Not Stand Alone – CA Artisan Cheese Fest Part 1

When my wonderful counterpart and I began putting this blog together, the obvious first step was research. With millions of festivals happening across the world every year, we realized our work was cut out for us and that we’d better get festin’ right away. Being a brand new operation (and penny-pinching post-grads at that), we decided to start our hands-on fest-sploration locally. This didn’t necessarily narrow things down too incredibly much (considering the fact that California has an absolute shit-ton of food-related festivals alone), but based on timing and a mutual obsession with cheese, we decided to attend the 4th Annual California’s Artisan Cheese Festival.

Hello and welcome to the Cheese Fest.

We have, of course, been to a number of festivals prior to the launch of Best of Fest, but Sonoma County’s grand fromage fiesta would be our first as reporters. As you can imagine, drinking craft beer and wine and eating fine cheeses all day may not necessarily fit within the budget of the twenty-something traveler, so we contacted the volunteer coordinator to sort out our options. Turns out, volunteering four hours of our time would get us free passes into the Sunday Marketplace – a wonderland of cheese, wine, beers and all manner of artisanal finery, more of which you will hear about later on. Being the “big” girls we are, we jumped at the chance to eat free cheese and signed right up for a volunteer shift.

The First of the Fests: OKTOBERFEST ’07

Best of Fest is lucky to trace it’s roots back one magical weekend in the mecca of all that is holy in festival wonderland: Munich, Germany, the home of the legendary Oktoberfest.

From the moment we decided to study abroad in Barcelona, it was never a question of whether we would go to Oktoberfest or not. We booked our flights in and out of Munich long before our flights to Barcelona in the first place, and had two different hotel reservations before submitting our housing requests on our program. Ya, that’s the way we roll.

After counting down the weeks, days and hours to our departure, we boarded Lufthansa for what was bound to be the most exhilarating weekend of our young adult lives. We had tirelessly salivated at the thought of countless chickens roasting on revolving spits, lederhosen galore and frothy beers in giant, glorious steins. The time had come.

Our hotel was darling and of course, we made ourselves right at home.

Day one of Oktoberfest began with a smorgasbord of greatness that included the essential German/European tidings: pretzels, champagne, nutella, and sausage.

Our waiter, a sweet German lad by the name of George, so graciously offered to let us borrow his umbrella as it was pouring outside and we had a bit of a hike to the train station. And with that, we were off!

Welcome. Bienvenidos. Bienvenue. Willkommen.

Photo courtesy of: The Big Picture

Well now, isn’t it a pleasure to see you here!

Welcome to Best of Fest, your funkadelic destination for festival exploration. We are your fest-tastic guides, Lauren and Shayna, and we’ll be holding you hostage on a trip through the world’s best festivals. Please fasten your safety belt,  keep hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times, and remember that objects in beer goggles are uglier than they appear.

So grab an adult beverage, cozy up and let the fest investigating begin!

Keep it festive,
Shayna & Lauren