The 26th Annual Great Alaska and Craft Beer Festival will bring 27 breweries to Haines this weekend—the most the event has ever hosted.
Breweries from around the state, the Yukon and Seattle, along with cideries, will offer more than 130 beers during the five-hour tasting event on Saturday.
A new feature of this year’s festival is the “I’ll Have Another” brew. In years past, brewers would meet after the festival and collaborate on a recipe and share it the following year amongst each other. This year, brewers will offer their version of the collaborative recipe to the public from a special tent, said Southeast Alaska State Fair executive director Jessica Edwards.
“All these different breweries will bring their ‘I’ll Have Another’ entry,” Edwards said. “This year’s beer will be a collaboration from last year.”
Haines Brewing Company co-owner Jeanne Kitayama said this year’s recipe is an alder-smoked Munich pale ale with a malt base and an East Kent Goldings hop finish. The quantity will be limited, but there will likely be beer leftover after the connoisseur’s tasting event from noon to 1 p.m. after which the gates will open for general admission, Edwards said.
Tickets for all the events, including the Gourmet Brewers’ Dinner, the connoisseurs’ tasting and the general festival tasting, all sold out in record time. The 200 available dinner tickets sold out in five days and it only took 35 days for the 1,300 general admission tickets to sell.
Four new breweries, Cooper Landing Brewery from Cooper Landing, Devil’s Club Brewing from Juneau, Bleeding Heart Brewing from Palmer, and Matanuska Brewing in Palmer and Alaska Ciderworks from Talkeetna will offer brews and cider at this year’s festival.
The popular slip and slide might not make its regular appearance. The post-brewfest “slip and slide” on the Fort Seward parade grounds organized by Vanessa Stewart and her husband John Hourd of Whitehorse, Y.T, will be absent this year. For the past five years, the couple brought sheets of Visqueen and homemade lubricant so that people can “burn off the beer fest booze,” Stewart told the CVN last May. The couple decided last year to pass the torch, but it’s unclear who, if anyone, will take the job.
Dennis Durr started a $700 fundraising campaign to raise money for a “Beer Fest Foam Machine Slip-n-Slide,” but the goal has not been met, according to the website gofundme.com.
Camping will be available on the lower half of the parade grounds, in Tlingit Park and the Portage Cove Campground.
Gordie Tentrees will perform on the fairground’s Park Stage Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. Juneau’s Lucid Culture will play at noon and The God Particles will headline at 3 p.m. on the Klondike Stage. Nine food vendors will offer gyros, pizza, cheese curds, fish tacos, Thai food and more.
Juneau restaurant Salt is again catering this year’s five-course dinner, which will include halibut ceviche, cured Alaska salmon, suckling pig and grilled peaches.
Called the Haines Homebrewers Festival, the first event was held at the Halsingland hotel and on Fort Seward’s Parade Grounds, attracting 20 guests from out of town, according to a Chilkat Valley News account.