We were Winter Beer Fest newbies up until yesterday. Don't get me wrong, we have been to many other beer festivals but it just seems like Winter and Summer Beer Fests are the holy grail for Michigan beer festivals. Needless to say we were very excited for this day to come. We had a number of friends from various breweries and restaurants that were going to be there and we couldn't wait to meet up with them! We really had no idea the types of events that would end up happening to make the day that much more memorable!

I'm a Beer Hound has recently become an Allied Trade Member of the Michigan Brewers Guild so we were very excited for the perks that come with being a member. One of the best ones (in my opinion) was the access to the real and heated and clean bathrooms. That was worth every penny of the membership! We had paid to take a bus to the festival through The Red Salamander in Grand Ledge Mi. This trip included out tickets to get in. We got to Red Salamander and could tell everyone else was just as excited as we were for the festival. Come to find out, our tickets had been misplaced due to the fact that we had paid for the trip before the owner (who happens to be a friend of ours) had the tickets in hand.

Karl made a couple phone calls and we were in the festival no problem so after a little ping of disappointment, we were suddenly on cloud 9 again! We got there and the line to get in was ridiculously long but it was OK because another perk of being a Allied Trade Member  is that you get into the festival earlier than the general public so we got to walk right up to the front of the line and go right in! The biggest newbie mistake we made was not pacing ourselves like we should have. When you are at a festival where most of the  breweries in Michigan are represented and showcasing their best beers, you want to try them all! By the end of the day, we had had so many different beers, that they were all starting to taste the same. Now I know why people go there and plan on only trying 1 or 2 styles of beer.

I loved going around to each booth and seeing what they had done to make their booth stand out and represent the feeling of their brewery. The Dark Horse Brewing Company bottles a ton of stouts so they did a section of their booth called The Tunnel of Stouts. It was a black tunnel constructed out of pipe and black plastic and you walked through it and at the end they had 4 of their best stouts to try. Another brewery had a mannequin that they put tap handles on and poured the beer out of her! Very creative! All of these little things added up to success because it made people talk and made people want to go see it for themselves. Shorts Brewing company never disappoints with their creativity. They actually had a Pistachio Cream Ale that tasted like cake! Anyone who knows me, knows that I have a love affair with cake so I was head over heels in love with this beer!

Like all good things, this too had to come to an end. As we boarded the bus we could tell everyone else had just as good of a time as we did. We all settled in and started to thaw out for the long ride home. It was a quiet ride home until the bus ran out of propane....... Little did anyone know, the bus must have a fuel leak because Karl had just put propane in it the day before. Thankfully we were only about 20 min from home. Everyone was able to get someone to come pick them up and Karl was also there with a couple vehicles and many apologies to make sure everyone made it home safe. We will defenintly be doing another trip with Red Salamander again. Even after all the mishaps Karl made everything right and gave us a trip that we will never forget and laugh about now. As for the festival itself, I can't wait until the Summer Beer Fest! There really is no festival that is quite as grand as the Winter and Summer Michigan Beer Festivals!