Ithaca Brewfest: After Action Report

This Saturday I drove my friends Jeff and Angela to Stewart Park in Ithaca for the second annual Ithaca Brewfest. The forecast was calling for widespread rain across across our part of the state for the latter half of the day, but we saw none of that in Ithaca (though we went through some spots of pouring rain on the drive down). It was in the low 60's when we left Rochester, but it was warm and muggy when we got out of the car in Ithaca. Fortunately, the weather quickly changed for the better when a nice cool set of air started moving in from the lake and things were comfortable after that.

I need to start bringing a camera to these things, which would require either digging mine out or buying a new one, which is what I'd like to do as my camera is really old (by CCD standards). The event was at Stewart Park which is right on the southern tip of Cayuga Lake. They used a good portion of the shoreline of the park for the event. Now, as with the Flour City Brewfest they gave us a nice looking 4 oz sample glass. They also gave everyone a little green card with eighteen numbered circles on it which was intended as a sort of moderating factor. The people serving beer at the brewery tables were supposed to mark off a circle each time you got a sample. It quickly became apparent that no one really cared about that. I must have had somewhere between fifteen and twenty samples and my card only has two marked off.

When it comes to setup I vastly preferred Ithaca's plan over the Flour City plan. For the Flour City Brewfest it was all held inside the concession area at Frontier Field, this being essentially a really long hallway area under the stands. That got really crowded really fast. The setup for the Ithaca Brewfest was much more open. When we walked in there was a ling of four tents to our right that traced along the shoreline of the lake. Each tent was probably 30 ft by 20 ft (I'm lousy at judging distance, though), and were about 15 ft apart from each other and had four or five breweries setup underneath. To the left there was one tent facing away from the entrance with a large open area in front of it that led to a stage where there were some actually pretty decent local bands playing. Behing the band was another tent (containint, among others: Stone, Ommegang, Ithaca and Weyerbacher) and a pavilion that had a few breweries in it (Middle Ages, Hook and Ladder, etc). There were a couple more tents lining the other side of the area around the stage. All in all, I'd say there were probably more than 30 breweries there, and even a few I had never heard of. The open space of the setup was great because we were able to get in, grab a beer, then get out and hang out with each other while not being in everyone's way.

The high points of this adventure will be detailed below. I discovered a couple more breweries in the southern Finger Lakes region that are within easy driving distance of Ithaca, making a really set of tours doable in a Saturday afternoon (which must occur sooner rather than later!). First up is Horseheads Brewing. For those wondering, Horseheads is a small town about 40 minutes South-Southwest of Ithaca and is a place I've visited frequently because of its good mall (the Arnot Mall) and the local aviation museum. So, Horseheads Brewing had a number of beers there including: their Pumpkin Ale, Newtown Brown Ale, Pale Expedition Ale, and their Lackawanna Steam Lager (a Steam beer, or 'California Common' as the style is now known). There's extremely little information about these beers on Beeradvocate so I'm linking to the images on the brewery's website of the bottle labels. I had the Pumpkin and Brown ales. The brown was a pretty solid representation of the style, being very well balanced. The pumpkin, though, was phenomenal. It's easily the best non-homebrewed pumpkin ale I've ever had. The best pumpkin ale I'd had before this was the Southampton Pumpkin Ale, as it had a great mix of the pumpkin pie spices and was nice and balanced. Horseheads went the extra step of making it slightly sweeter to complement the spices and give it a more authentic pumpkin pie flavor, all while maintaining a flavor that still reminds you you're drinking beer. They did a great job of adding just enough sweetness to make it perfect. The website says it's now available in 22 oz bottles, so I must acquire these!

The other new discovery was Market Street Brewing Company in Corning, NY. They weren't quite as impressive as Horseheads, but still good. The beer of theirs I tried was the D'Artagnan Dark British Ale which was touted as a British Mild. It definitely doesn't fit the Mild style very well as it has a 6.5% ABV and has a more assertive flavor than you'd expect. That being said it was still pretty good. It wasn't very hoppy which is fine by me.

The next noteworthy drink was a new release from the Ithaca Brewing Company. Ithaca has been experimenting with small production run beers called their Excelsior Series, recently releasing a beer called Brute which is classified as a Golden Sour Ale. This is a light, slightly hazy golden beer with a very dry and moderately sour taste. There's a very slight hint of sweetness to it which balances things out and winds up delicious. A very good find, indeed.

Another beautiful find was Weyerbacher's new anniversary beer called Thirteen. It's a 'Belgian inspired Imperial Stout'. It's got the heavy, thick and roasty body of an imperial stout with the alcohol bite to back it up, but it also has some of the characteristic Belgian yeast fruitiness in the background. There is something slightly off about it, and looking at the top review on Beeradvocate, a guy suggests there are a bit of fusels in this beer. That sounds like what we were tasting in it. In my opinion they're not as pronounced as the reviewer thinks so I guess it depends on how refined your taste is. Overall I liked it a lot, though there are far better imperial stouts out there.

So when we finished with the brewfest we were in need of food, Angela demanding pancakes, so we headed over to the State Diner a few blocks west of the Ithaca Commons on State Street. A few shots of coffee and an infusion of bacon goodness and I was all set for the drive back. All in all it was a fun day and one I definitely will be going back for in the future. Next up will be a brewfest at Custom Brewcrafters in Honeoye Falls sometime in October, an Oktoberfest in Irondequoit sometime later this month, and there must be plans made for a round of tours through Ithaca, Watkins Glen, Corning and Horseheads. Now that would make for a great weekend.