I participated in my first virtual beerfest put on by https://surfbeerfest.com/ while locked down in quarantine due to Covid. They run a couple of different beer festivals on the beautiful Central Coast of California. This year they’re running three @ home festivals. At first, this seems contrary to the whole concept of the festival. Mingling, tasting, eating, sunburning, waiting in line for beer, waiting in line for the good old port ‘o potty…maybe they are on to something. Here’s how to beerfest at home when you are quarantined!
Top tips for a beerfest at home
- Throw all of your beers in a cooler where you will be “participating”. I made the mistake of leaving my beers in the fridge which called for a surprising amount of running back and forth to stay on pace.
- Have glassware of different shapes and sizes available at your fingertips. You’ll hopefully end of with a variety of different beer styles and you want to showcase them as best you can in the right glass. Additionally, some of these (hopefully a lot of these) will be keepers for the intermissions. Some will get dumped like at any other festival. Which leads us to…
- Have a dump bucket. You aren’t going to love every beer. That’s probably good since you aren’t going to knock back 12-14 full beers in an afternoon and feel great about it the next day. (Alternatively, share with your Covid-19 buddy!)
- Eat a good meal before hand. The Surf ‘n’ Suds Festival started at Noon and I didn’t have a meal plan in place. You should.
- Hydrate. Have a pitcher of water by your side and drink it.
Format
The Surf ‘n’ Suds Festival was twelve beers done in three groups of four. Maybe four groups of three. It gets a little fuzzy. The events team had a live stream going and then played prerecorded videos from the breweries. It was a mix of iPhone one takes to pretty highly produced affairs. All of them fun to watch. You learn a little bit about the brewery and the beer from the brewer or owner. Something that is sometimes hard to do at a in person beerfest. This was probably one of the best parts about the festival besides having no line for the restroom and being at home already when it was over. During the live feed you can also participate in the chat. There was some friendly banter about the beers which provided the feeling of participating with others.
In between the beer sets there were local bands playing prerecorded sets. This was a good time to grab some snacks and hit the restroom. The sets of beer go quickly with not much time to mess around (or run to find the next beer in the fridge).
After the event was over there was a Zoom afterparty with some of the breweries. There was a chance to ask questions of the brewers and the beers.
Overall, I was surprised with how much fun I had. It was good enough to do it again next month. I bought an extra ticket for a friend so we’ll have another added dimension of connecting via FaceTime. Buy tickets at https://surfbeerfest.com/ They ship to anyone in California or find an event near you.
Now that you’ve learned how to beerfest at home when you are quarantined, find out how to make your own damn beer!
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