My husband and I went to the Michigan Brewer’s Guild Summer Beer Festival Friday, July 26. To start things off, we parked our car and our gear at a favorite local watering hole and had some nachos as our pre-game meal. Little did I know that I’d end up burning off some of those calories fairly quickly!

Sigh…we got to the gate, and my husband was swearing. Which is not altogether unusual.

“I forgot my driver’s license” he said.

This isn’t like your neighborhood liquor store where the cashier knows that you’re an old fogey and never cards ya. Maybe they even turn a blind eye when you send your kid to the store on a liquor/cigarettes/lotto run. Nope, this beer festival takes ID checks very, very seriously. I didn’t even think about whining, begging, bargaining or doing my best Karen imitation. Rules are rules.

I’m the faster walker out of the two of us, mainly because of my longer legs, but also because of my husband’s arthritis. We’re both older than 50, so mobility issues are not completely unusual.

Thankfully since the beer festival was in the town in which I’ve lived on and off for about 24 years, I know the terrain well! Utilizing every shortcut that I knew, I was off to the races. It truly felt off going against the flow of “traffic” by way of other beer festival visitors!

I did feel a bit dangerously naughty crossing the railroad tracks. Well, it’s “technically” illegal, you know! I could have gotten caught by an undercover Amtrak cop, yelled at by a finger-wagging do-gooder Boy Scout leader like the one who guarded the tracks for the Heritage Festival in 2010 – or worse – run over by an incoming train. Thankfully the train schedules were in my favor!

Plenty of other beer festers were illegally crossing the tracks too, so I felt a bit more confident about my law breaking 😁

Next, I had to pass a dexterity check by navigating the railroad ties properly. Would I successfully navigate the two active tracks and one unused track, or would I fall on my face with no phone to call for help? So how did I do on my die roll? Well, I didn’t fall on my face or ass, so it wasn’t a 1, but I didn’t dance over the tracks like Legolas the elf so not a 20, so…maybe a 10? It did slow me down a tad.

Thank the gods I hadn’t done any “pre gaming” at the bar beforehand and was completely sober! Good thing that my sobriety wouldn’t last very long 🙂

I made the half mile round trip in about 14 minutes total. Traversing those tracks slowed me down a bit, but not much as crossing Forest Street! Traffic is practically non stop on this street, which was my last obstacle between me and the parking lot where our car was parked, and my husband’s wallet and ID was located. Also, the heat probably slowed me down a little too. When I’m in my top fighting shape, not crossing railroad tracks, it’s not hot outside and blah blah blah – I can easily cover a mile in less than 20 minutes.

Maybe drivers-for-hire should post themselves nearby at festivals and other events for just such things? I would have happily gotten into a car with a stranger in this instance! But since drivers have to deal with stop lights, heavy pedestrian traffic and other things not vexing walkers, maybe a driver wouldn’t have saved me much time.

We set up our camp chairs and started our beer drinking adventure!

I wanted a way to document which beers and brewery tents I visited without using the actual check list provided by the Michigan Brewers Guild. Who wants to fiddle with pen and paper when you need your hands need to hold a tasting cup and reach for beer tokens in your pocket? I did my “documentation” by collecting swag from each brewery tent I stopped at for a taste. If the brewery didn’t have swag to offer, I took a photo of their name or beer sign with my phone.

Speaking of beer signs, there were quite a few of them around the festival with an artistic rendering of Brad. Am I talking about my longtime friend Brad? No, I’m talking about a Michigan beer brewer named Brad Etheridge who died in late 2023. A number of breweries offered mango flavored variations of beers named “Fuego de Brad.” Since I like fruity beers, I wound up trying quite a lot of them!

As I mentioned earlier, I am what you’d call a fruity beer enthusiast, though mainly the wheat-based beers or ales, not sours, so those were the ones I kind of gravitated toward. Some of the tastiest ones I had were a margaritas inspired seltzer from Looking Glass Brewery in DeWitt, a “cran razz” beer from Brewery Becker in Brighton, and a pickle flavored beer from Block Brewing in Howell. Though I usually shy away from getting beers I’ve already had before at beer festivals, sometimes that rule gets trumped by sentimentality! I just HAD to visit Mt. Pleasant based Mountain Town Station’s tent because I’m a Chippewa! I love their Railyard Raspberry beer.

A little more about that pickle beer…though it was delicious and would pair nicely with a burger, a taste was probably enough! I…a,so may have been a little shall I say “lit” by the time I drank it, and I may have called it “Pickle Rick” – and gotten other people in line to call it that, too. Not surprising I fixed a burger for myself when I got home!

People watching is always a blast at any festival. It’s always amusing to see the crazy outfits festival visitors wear! I saw some beer “fraus” in traditional garb, saw some lederhosen, and of course, Hawaiian shirts galore!

I saw a group of three blonde women and a couple of guys, and all of the women wore black dresses. I quipped, “They must be the ‘mean girls’ of beer fest! On Fridays they wear black!”

Apparently we weren’t the only ones people watching! We heard someone say “Go Pods” to us in passing. A reference to our trivia team, of course!

The absolute best “conversation shirt ” I saw all day was this one!