Great Taste of the Midwest

In 2012, we put together a post that we thought would have the bar crowd excited, especially the beer drinkers. Much to our chagrin, the World’s Top 15 Beer Festivals was met with more disdain than adoration.

It seems in our quest to find the World’s Top Beer festivals we overlooked many of the smaller craft brew festivals, which of course upset beer connoisseurs from around the web and all over the globe. Just take a look at the comments on reddit. Yikes! Well lesson learned.

One common complaint found in many of the comments, hate-mails, and death threats (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit about the last one) was our lack of including, or even mentioning, the Great Taste of the Midwest.

We wanted to see what the fuss was all about, so last summer we packed up the BarWhiz van and took a road trip out to Madison, Wisconsin to attend this much lamented beer festival.

Occurring on the second Saturday of every August, 6,000 Wisconsinites converge on beautiful Olin-Turville Park to sample the 600+ offerings of over one hundred brewpubs and microbreweries from all over the Midwest.

It’s not just about drinking at the Great Taste of the Midwest beer festival. Beer education is also a big part as well. From cooking with beer, to beer pairing, and everything in between, the presentation pavilion is the place to be to get your beer education on. With most sessions capping the limit at 100 people it can be hard to get a seat, so arrive early if you want to join in on the fun.

So yes, we now agree with all the seasoned beer festivalgoers, the Great Taste of the Midwest definitely needs to be included in the list of the World’s Top Beer festivals. If you want to check it out for yourself, the 2013 Great Taste of the Midwest is on Saturday, August 10, 2013.

For more information visit their website: www.mhtg.org.

***Update***
Unfortunately, by the time this post was ready for live submission the 2013 Great Taste of the Midwest was already sold out. To commiserate your loss we’ve decided to share with you some pictures of the 2012 festival: