Craft beer week offers brew lovers eleven days of fun

Thirsty for a microbrew? This week Madison’s bars, breweries, and pubs overflow with craft beers and people to drink them. For Madison Craft Beer Week residents and beer tourists can enjoy tastings, tours, games, and even a film about Wisconsin beers.

Over 150 different events will take place from Thursday, May 3 through Sunday, May 13, sponsored and created by various businesses throughout Dane County with an interest in craft beer.

Brewers from Capital Brewing, the Vintage Brewing Co., and The Great Dane came together to create a beer with local ingredients in honor of Craft Beer Week. They named the brew Common Thread, and it represents the friendliness inherent in the local brewing scene.

“It really shows how close knit the Madison area breweries are, how cooperative they are, and some of the great things that can come out of that cooperation,” said event organizer Jeff Glazer.

Glazer and two others organized Craft Beer Week for the first time last year and again for its 2012 return. Glazer serves as Editor-in-Chief of the online Madison Beer Review, and he conceived and coordinated the event with Robyn Klinge of The Vintage, and Bill Rogers of The Malt House.

They saw similar craft beer festivals popping up in larger cities and knew that Madison hosted enough local brews to make a successful event. Glazer explained that different beer scenes around the country have different characteristics in flavor and community. While Chicago microbrews live in an urban environment and may not travel beyond the neighborhood in which they’re created, Madison’s scene expands beyond the city.

“[Madison craft beer] draws from a much larger area, but it provides a common source of identification,” said Glazer. “The reason why people identify with craft beer so well is because it is localized.”  

Last year the coordinators organized a scavenger hunt to encourage people to attend multiple events. But this year it wasn’t necessary.

“We found we don’t have to provide a lot of encouragement for people to attend more than one event,” Glazer explained.

Paul Gilbertson, a local beer enthusiast, came eagerly to events last Friday and Saturday. Gilbertson brews his own beer, grows his own hops, and hopes to try every type of beer bottled in Wisconsin. He’s reached 350 already.

Gilbertson attended the official kick-off event on Saturday, a cask ale festival and tasting. While he said he wouldn’t be dancing to the polka tunes of a brass quintet, he was eager to try the selection of unfiltered, fresh-tasting ales.

This particular event allowed him to “try something that I normally wouldn’t be able to,” said Gilbertson. “I’m a big fan of cask ales.”

The cask ale festival and the culminating Brewer’s Olympics are the only two events officially sponsored by Madison Craft Beer Week. The closing event will take place at Demetral Park on Sunday, May 13 with teams from various local breweries. They will compete in server obstacle courses and grain sac races, among other challenges.

While they haven’t started planning next year’s Craft Beer Week, Glazer and his co-organizers will recoup at the end of the week and start looking ahead. Their enthusiasm motivates them to take on this huge logistical feat.

“We do it because we love craft beer, to be perfectly honest. Any other reason besides that is kind of besides the point,” said Glazer. “We just have a passion for it.”

For more information about Madison Craft Beer Week and to see the events schedule, visit their website.