One of the many great events from this past Saturday was the High Plains BrewHoff in Brew Lab‘s Old Downtown Overland Park parking lot. I had planned on attending more events during the day, but I had a small injury in the morning and could only get to the BrewHoff. Below you’ll find a quick recap and some pictures from the event.
It was a good time overall with a lot of great, unique beers. It had the same bad/good things as last year. Bad: kids, event space too small/too many people. Good: the beers, free snacks, water stations, good bands, it was free. See my review for last year here.
They did try to expedite the entry by having a VIP line and letting people in 30 minutes early Although a line didn’t start to form until about 12:45pm, by 2pm there was still quite a line. They did also try to discourage children (and Broncos apparel) by posting on their Facebook, but there were still quite a few kids (and one Broncos hat).
I love the spirit of the homebrewers. There’s so much creativity and passion that goes into each beer and it’s
refreshing to be at the type of event where the server knows what they’re talking about. Many tents had entertaining setups, from a Craftsmen toolbox keezer to a group of Fuzzy Helmets.
There weren’t as many homebrewers that were in the process of going legit as last year. Crane, Red Crow, Torn Label, and Double Shift all had a tent last year and are either already open or within a month of opening. BVH Brewery (Twitter, Facebook, Untappd) will be spending 2016 promoting their beers at several events while working on getting a permanent location. Mount Anderson Brewery (Untappd) is in talks with Missouri Hy-Vees to start selling 22oz bottles of their beer. They’ll be brewing and bottling just outside of Peculiar, MO.
Starting in 2009, a group of Brooksiders decided they like to homebrew and wanted to share that experience with friends, family, and fellow beer lovers, so they created the Annual Brookside Nanobrew Festival. For the first few years, there were just a handful of beers to be tried, but every year grew bigger. So in 2012, they upgraded to a larger festival called KC Nanobrew Festival. This year, over 50 homebrewers will be sharing over 100 of their creative beers.
of the homebrewers. There’s so much creativity and passion that goes into each beer and it’s