In addition to buying tokens, you need to put down a refundable deposit (€3) for a souvenir tasting glass, and likely purchase a thorough program listing all of the beers (€0.50). With glasses in hand, we then started visiting the 100+ tasting booths. One of the more popular stands was the double-sized booth shared by De Struisse and Alvinne. My favorite here was the Rio Reserva. Also available were Cuvee Delphine, Pannepot, Shark Pants (a hoppy collaboration with Three Floyds), two barrel-aged variants of Melchior, and many other beers. Other standout offerings were La Vermontoise (Blaugies/Hill Farmstead collaboration), Duvel Tripel Hop (Sorachi Ace this year), Prearis Quadrupel (coffee infused), St. Bernardus Paasbier. Only a single AB InBev product was available (Leffe Royale, being served via a self-serve tap system that they are marketing for in-home use. (The Diamond Club in the Brussels airport also had the same system serving Leffe beer to their customers.).

The Sunday session was less crowded overall, so there was more opportunity to talk with the brewers, as well as other attendees. Food was available for purchase – frites, pizza, hamburgers, paninis, pasta, etc. The festival hall is located at the edge of a business park, so the only food options are the ones provided by the festival. A small amount of beer-related merchandise was available for purchase, as well as bottled beer at many of the booths. Very few of the beers ran out before the end of the day’s session (with the exception of de Strusse/Alvinne, where about half the beers were depleted before the end of each day) and there were few lines to wait for beer).

A nice touch that is perhaps common at Belgian festivals, was that the servers at each booth would wash (with soap) and rinse (separately) your glass for each sample. Seating at tables, as well as some free- standing tables was available. All of the tasting booths, as well as the seating was located indoors (non-smoking), with a small outdoor smoking patio, as well as the food trucks which were located outside. Another unusual feature (from my perspective at least) was that while admission to the festival was free, use of the restrooms cost €1.50 (one time fee for the session).

We had a great time at Zythos and I would recommend attending to anyone who loves Belgian beer. The Belgian beer drinkers that we met were very knowledgable of Belgian styles and brewers. Many in attendance were members of clubs (with matching club shirts) that meet to learn about and sample beer – usually under the guidance of a brewer or other experienced taster. And if you make it to Belgium, then you will have the opportunity to visit any number of classic beer destinations.

Some breweries of note are the Marble Brewery, Terminal Brewhouse, and Woodruff Brewing.

The Jam featured music from Kelsey’s Woods, Barstool Romeos, Black Cadillacs, and Cutthroat Shamrock.

This year the organizers, Community Shares, had an area setup for children including a moon bounce and craft table.

Community Shares helps area groups in need.

The crowd is not bad due to distributed booths and food areas. The music has been great featuring good mix of bands.

The pier is the right value for what you get. You have access to over 10 beers without purchasing $3 tokens per beer. The foods is great. The food included Kobe beef sliders, pork bar-b-q, chicken bar-b-q, dessert and much more.

The crowd got very large late in the evening, but the beer tent area remained very accessible.

The festival will have 31 breweries including: A1A Ale Works, Barley Mob, Bold City Brewery, Twains Billiards and Tap, Foothills Brewing Company, and many more.

This year’s festival will feature music by: Big Head Todd and The Monsters, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, Ponderosa, and American Aquarium.

The Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant Group, which owns Big River Grille & Brewing Works, has kindly sponsored our trip by giving us VIP passes to the festival.

With all the rain, the ground was wet and muddy.

They will be serving just about every beer available in Alabama. They are raising money to help change the Alabama beer laws to allow speciality beers into our state. Presently, most beers listed as the best beers on Beer Advocate can't be sold in Alabama. Here is a great chance to help change Alabama for the better and enjoy some food and beers.

It will be a great event!

If you don't know about Free The Hops, they are organized to change Alabama beer laws to raise the allowed alcohol percentage and container limit. These change will allow all the speciality beer that have come into the market place to be sold in Alabama.

We hope to see you there.

- Brian Allen

Terry Cavanagh and Alpine Express provided great entertainment. I snapped a good picture of Michael Hoffer playing his trombone in the audience.

Karen and I tried for the first time an Elephant Ear topped with powder sugar and cinnamon. It was good, but I think we will be sticking with Funnel cake.

- Brian Allen

It is a great opportunity to try beers NOT available within Alabama due to the prohibition era laws. The laws in Alabama define beer as follows:

BEER, or MALT OR BREWED BEVERAGES. Any beer, lager beer, ale, porter, malt or brewed beverage, or similar fermented malt liquor containing one-half of one percent or more of alcohol by volume and not in excess of five percent alcohol by weight and six percent by volume, by whatever name the same may be called.

Free The Hops wants to change this law to allow speciality beers in this state. Many speciality beer are over 6% in alcohol by volume and we want to raise that limit to 14.9%.

You to can join the cause at Free The Hops. If you join, you will get to help bring great beer to Alabamians and you can join us at our tastings.

Here is a picture from the last tasting which was held in Birmingham.

The idea is to bring a friend to find out about the organization and bring a beer that you can't get in Alabama due to the laws.

Things got going slowly the morning of the festival. Karen’s back was killing her more than normal, but she ran through her exercises and I helped where I could. (I get to bend her to put things back where they go.)

We headed out for lunch and we settled at the Downtown Grill & Brewery. Karen had the pecan crusted trout and I had the Quesadilla. The food was great and we had a long talk the general manager about the brewery, the beer festival, and where to get good beer in Knoxville. I wish I could remember his name, but thanks for good advice on the where to get good beer.

Karen and I headed off to the Leaf & Ale to pick some beer for trip back to Huntsville. We found a great selection including many beers that would be available at the festival.

We arrived back the Marriot and waited for the transportation to the festival. Our driver, KA, was late, but we all did arrive at the festival in due time. We learned that everyone had ‘Will-Call” tickets which meant we had a line, but there was no line for purchasing tickets at the gate. Maybe next year, we can arrange for the tickets to be at the hotel.

After walking through the gate, we ran into Brian from the New Knoxville Brewing Company. He accused us of stalking him from beer festival to beer festival. (Could be?)

Alltech’s Lexington Brewing Company had great beer called Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale which is aged in spent bourbon casks. Here you can see Karen waiting as it is being poured. It gave the ale a mellow bourbon’s oaky over tone.

We enjoyed Rogue Ales‘ Hazelnut Brown Nectar way too much.

Foothills Brewery‘s Oktoberfest was super. It is one of the best Oktoberfest that I have had this season.

The Tennessee Valley Homebrewer’s Association had a great selection of well made brews. We had a stout and kolsch which were both very good.

The first two musical acts were okay, but they were a little too garage band or college fraternity party for me. The next two acts, Scott Miller & The Commonwealth preceded by Mic Harrison and The High Score, were good. I enjoyed Scott Miller’s clean vocal stylings. You can checkout Scott Miller & The Commonwealth on iTunes.

The New Knoxville Brewing Company pictured here was our first beers to try. Karen had their Hefeweizen while I had the Pale Ale. We eventually tried all of them and especially enjoyed the English Brown Ale. The next morning as we were packing our car, Brian and rest of the crew from the New Knoxville Brewing Company stopped to talk and gave us two six packs. Great!

The Foot-Hills Brewing Co. was another great group of guys. They cut us a break on the price of their shirts after they heard I collected them. The shirt each featured a different beer and color. Some of the guys where wearing the shirt in the booth on the left in this picture.

The Brewers area was great. Big River Grille & Brewing catered the area with ribs, hamburgers, Jalapeño Spinach Cheese Dip with Chips, and draft beer of course. You can see by my picture it was great food.

Some of high lights of the beers are Sweetwater’s Blue, Asheville Brewing Company’s Houdini ESP, Carolina Beer & Beverage’s Pumpkin Ale, Foot-Hills Brewing Company’s Total Eclipse Stout, New Knoxville Brewing Company’s English Brown Ale, and A1A Ale Work’s Orange Blossom Honey Ale. These beers were some of the best at the festival.

Some of low points in the beers are Zuma Brewing Company’s Cancun Lager and New Knoxville Brewing Company’s Hefeweizen.

Now with carbo-loading done, we headed back to the festival area to check on setup progress. We talked with Mary Kilbride who we were told is in charge. Mary gave us the low down and we were able to pass along some of our ideas for how to improve the festival. This year the festival has a VIP section which provides free food and beer along with special seating over the river.

We ended up at Big River Grille & Brewing eating the Classic Combo which has great. The Classic Combo is made up of Jalapeño Spinach Cheese Dip with Chips, Buffalo Wings, and Chicken Springs Rolls. Karen had the Sweat Magnolia Brown Ale and I had the seasonal Summer Wheat. The brown ale won the 1998 Gold at the Great American Beer Festival. She describe the brown as not too nutty, but balanced with chocolate tones in the finish. The beer’s head was nice, but quickly dissipated. The beer had a medium body and little aromatic. The wheat beer has lightly fruity with a good mouth feel. The beer was rich for a wheat, but it was still very balanced. Its taste was very similar to Pyramid Brewing’s Hefeweizen Beers, which is one of best hefeweizen.

Later for dinner, we headed to Mellow Mushroom for pizza and beer. Karen and I love pizza and Mellow Mushroom is one of the best around. They are also known for having a large beer selection and this location was no exception. We had a nice variety with Spaten Munich, Whittekerke, Falls City, and Monty Python’s Holy Grail Ale.

We want to take our bikes this year to the beer festival. Well, Karen's trailer hitch has arrived for her new car. It will be installed this weekend. Chattanooga is a beautiful area and riding our bikes will allow us to take in more of the city.

One place that I love to stop by is the Pickle Barrel. It is a cool shaped building and has great sandwiches and pickles, too. At night, they have bands. You can dine on the roof, but mid-day roof dining can be hot and muggy.

It is schedules for September 10th, 2005.