Michigan Summer Beer Festival!

Last Saturday I went to the annual Michigan Summer Beer Festival.

It was AWESOME.

The festival was held in Riverside Park in Ypsilanti. It was sooo incredibly hot that day-- about 95-- but we took the city bus there and immediately dove in.

The festival ran from 1-6pm and we definitely got our money's worth. After getting past check-in, we received 15 wooden drink tokens, a tasting cup, and a map and checklist of all of the breweries featured.

With over 450 different Michigan brews available, we definitely had our work cut out for us! We started with a Batch 9,000 from Bell's Brewery.

This beer was super rich and roasty-- NOT the best way to start out a hot day of drinking! So I immediately retreated to my good ol New Holland Brewery with an Old Farmhouse Mad Hatter. Refreshing!

Later we hit up the "back forty" area of the park which held the Short's brewery table. It was there I fell in love with Short's Strawberry Short's Cake.

The beer was fruity but not too sweet and oh so crisp. True love.

I felt myself gravitating towards the fruit beers all day long because it was so hot! The beer festival did a great job of providing water taps all over the park and I made sure to hydrate as much as possible.

We ran into SO many grad student friends! It was a packed event and everywhere I turned I knew someone.

By the end of the festival, we were all hot, sweaty and tipsy. I had an insane amount of fun and definitely will be coming back next year.

I did pretty well too-- I managed to hit up New Holland, Short's, Founder's, Right Brain, Dark Horse, Crooked Tree, Bell's, Brewery Vivant, Hopcat, Arcadia, and more breweries!

Michigan truly is the great beer state. :)