Booneville Beer Fest!

5th Annual festival to be held on April 21st from 1pm to 6pm.  Pouring was stopped at 5pm this year.

For those of you who have never been to this fest, it's quite a hedonistic one.  It's in the middle of Boonville, a small town with a lot of open space around.  The fest is held at the fairgrounds.  You can camp at the fairgrounds too, which is where the real fun begins.  

The fest is only 5 hours, which is not all that long.  But if you get there Friday night, drink your way into Saturday and through the day, spend all of Saturday night having some beers at the campground, it turns into quite a festival.

Anderson Valley Brewing Company invites all the participating brewers to camp on the brewery grounds.  As you could imagine, it's quite a party.  A couple hundred drunken brewers with bon fires going and some great food and awesome beer flowing all night long.  There's nothing finer.

The weather this year was absolutely perfect.  It was pretty scary when on Friday it was pouring all day.  It stopped on Friday night though and Saturday was an incredible day.  There was a lot of sunburn after the fest.

I stole this list of breweries from Anderson Valley's page.  There were supposed to be about 50 breweries.

Who's Gonna Be There?   Brewery roster subject to change Alaskan Brewing Company Alesmith Anchor Brewing Company Anderson Valley Brewing Company Beach Chalet Bear Republic Brewing Company Boundry Bay Brewing Company Butte Creek Brewing Company Deschutes E&O Trading Company Eel River Brewing Company El Toro Brewing Company Full Sail Brewing Company Golden Pacific Brewing Company Hoptown Brewing Company Humboldt Brewing Company Jack's Brewing Company Lagunitas Brewing Company Lost Coast Brewery Lucky Labrador Brewing Company Mad River Brewing Company Magnolia Pub and Brewery Mammoth Brewing Company Marin Brewing Company Mendocino Brewing Company Moylan's Brewery Mount St. Helena Brewing Company North Coast Brewing Company Pizza Port Solana Beach Potrero Brewing Company The Powerhouse Brewing Company Pyramid Brewery Red Rock Brewery / Winery Russian River Brewing Company Sacramento Brewing Company Seabright Brewery Sierra Nevada Brewing Company Six Rivers Brewing Company SLO Brewing Company Snowshoe Brewing Company Speakeasy Steelhead Brewing Company Stone Brewing Company Stuft Pizza & Brewing Company Sudwerk Third Street Aleworks Triple Rock Brewery 21st Amendment Brewery Café Ukiah Brewing Company Willow Street Brewery

I had the camera out at the fest, but I was pretty busy cruising around drinking beer and talking to everyone.  Check out this next page for some pictures of the fest and of the aftermath.  There's a lot of pictures, so be patient if you're on a dial-up line.  I'm amazed that I didn't lose the camera.  The only thing I lost was consciousness.