Well, consider us blown away by the amazing turn out for our Spobrewing for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation event! We actually sold out of the commemorative tasting glasses and saw about three times the amount of traffic we had expected. That is awesome.
Manito Tap House turned out to be as great of a venue as we had hoped it would be. The gastropub's emphasis on craft beer meshed well with the crowd, and we noticed quite a few enjoying the place's food and brews after they had passed through the homebrewing gauntlet. Consider us fans of Manito Tap House.
Same goes for Big Sky which provided three types of beers for us -- the IPA, the brand new Powder Hound (which lived up to the greatness of last year's edition) and a special "Montana only" (though not anymore) Mexican Dark Lager which was the crowd favorite.
And finally, Savor Sweets provided suckers, which was all kinds of awesome. People were curious after hearing the media buzz about the local candy, and everybody seemed to be very much into the products.
So, Manito Tap House, Big Sky, and Savor Sweets -- thanks for supporting this event! The donations collected for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation will be greatly appreciated, and we couldn't have done it without your support.
And of course, we could not have done it without the brewers either, and what a brew-off it was. With all respect to the original SpoBREW, the quality was higher this time around, likely because Inland Brewers Unite had such a strong showing here. The average scores for the winner and lowest placed entry were extremely close, but in the end, there could only be one winner:
- Bad Seed: Juniper IPA
- Stephen: Pompous Pale and Harvest Ale
- Michelle: Raspberry Cream, Barley Wine
- Cody: Hazelnut Brown, Greenbay Pale, Smashing Pumpkin Ale
- Joe: Oatmeal Stout
- Team SpoCOOL: SpoBREW Classics, including a coffee porter that literally exploded.
- Adam: Oktoberfest
- Rick: Pale Ale
Again, this was a very close race, but word was the Juniper IPA was something very special. Sadly we didn't have time to taste all the ales ourselves, but what we did try was amazing. (Personal favorites: Michelle's Barley Wine and Cody's Pale.)
A big thanks to all the brewers! Hopefully everybody had a good time and saw this as a good venue to showcase their beer.
As for the future of SpoBREW, there has been some interest in doing something larger than any of our previous outings -- stay tuned for more info about that.