June 3–4, 2016 in Boston
All this inside of a sour beer package made for one of the most interesting 2 oz pours I’ve ever had. When you see roasty beers on the shelf, you don’t only see straight up stouts or porters. There is often an addition, or adjunct, used to differentiate them and offer different flavors. However, based on the beers available at EBF this year, I think we’re going to continue to see an increase in flavored dark beers. Oskar Blues released a mainstream coconut porter last year and Ballast Point just started distributing a coconut version of their Victory at Sea Baltic porter earlier this year.
More and more people will start to look for different beers, beers with weird flavors, beers they haven’t had before. Breweries with a varied and rotating portfolio will succeed more, and well-established breweries may look to change things up a bit. These breweries are making beers that you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere to buy for home consumption. Most consumers acquire them via trading or waiting in long lines at the breweries themselves. It’s no surprise that the lines to sample these beers at the festival were long; the curiosity and hype around these breweries is enormous.
Newburgh Brewing Company’s C.A.F.E. Sour is made with Ethopian Yrgicheffe coffee. Whole grain teff and gesho leaves and sticks are added, making for one intensely interesting beer. Wildly refreshing with zesty character, ginger beer soda is the ultimate cocktail ingredient for your next drink. Massachusetts’ first tastes of Wicked Weed and Almanac; oysters and sours at Row 34; brunch with BeerAdvocate and Dogfish Head; and so much more.
Drunk 2 and Drunk 1 causing mischief while visiting every EBF booth in the Seaport World Trade Center and knocking down all the craft beer in their path. The beer lineup is the same for all three sessions, however, all beers are subject to change and availability. Smuttlabs, Allagash, Oskar Blues, Ballast Point, Cambridge Brewing Company, and Other Half are taking over the Independent’s draft linesfollowing the festival. Avid beer drinker, Founder of The Craft Beer Enthusiast Union, beer traveler. Right on the edge of Harvard University campus this very cool spot is a favorite of locals and students.
I also noticed trends in terms of which beers were brought and which flavors, adjuncts, and aging techniques were employed. Every year is a bit different, leading me to think about how the changes in what brewers bring to this festival are related to the trends we see in the craft beer industry in general every year. I feel like, in some ways, we can use EBF as a predictor of what we can expect to see in the beer world.
Talk about a hop attack to take your evening into overdrive. Convert that old refrigerator into a draft beer dispenser. Plus get FREE shipping on select kegerator conversion kits. Please be advised that some of the beers poured at EBF may contain allergens.
Here is a visual representation of our EBF experience. Join us as we celebrate brewers who push the boundaries of brewing and raise a fist at the norm! Hosted by BeerAdvocate, the 16th annual Extreme Beer Fest will be held on February 1 & 2, 2019 at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, Mass. Featuring 120+ brewers and 400+ beers, across two days and three sessions, this will be the biggest and most diverse lineup of extreme beers ever. Sponsored by the Brewers Association, Hop Head Farms, and Proximity Malt. Extreme Beer Fest is the ultimate throwdown of craft beer creativity.
We’re not saying you should skip the line at Funky Buddha (we’d never say that!), but if you want to find the next Dogfish Head, you should focus on the underground and underrated. Here are some of the best beers to look for from this year’s fest. If everybody was as nice as Kent Falls owner Barry Labendz, the world would be a much more pleasant place. The brewery, located on a farm in Connecticut, puts atlantic city beer and music festival 2017 out funky beers like Variant 4, a dark strong ale fermented with Brettanomyces, aged on peaches, and matured in peach brandy barrels. If it’s complexity you’re after, skip the therapy session and pop the cap off a beer from Kent Falls. You can always count on Row 34 to bring the best beer out for special events like EBF, and their Friday night after party is going to be incredible for sour lovers.