A new craft beer festival, Fruit Beer Festival, launches this summer in Abbotsford at the Railway District Community Market, with beers made exclusively with bush fruits and tree fruits. “We’re regular attendees of both Abbotsford’s Farm Market and Vancouver’s Riley Park Farm Market and we imagined a beer festival inside of a farmers market – due to liquor laws a beer festival has to be 19+ - so we turn to putting on Fruit Beer Festival to help support local fruit producers while doing something delicious that hasn’t been done in Canada," says Mike Willis, of West Craft.
West Craft, the organizer behind Fruit Beer Festival, is promising an all-inclusive drink commitment with tickets, live music by Dan Tait and Tiger Moon, a ton of food vendors with a pop-up farmers market, and a scoop of ice cream from Banter Ice-cream. Festival organizers approached brewers with the challenge of making original beers using real whole, pureed, or juiced fruits without using any of the extracts or flavorings that have contributed to giving fruit beers a bad name.
Kicking off as the festival begins will be Kelowna talent Dan Tait, who’s sound is defined by his busy guitar, and powerful soaring voice. Two-piece folk band Tiger Moon follows up with a barn-burning performance that features guitars, mandolin, and their pair o’ boots and big voices with influences from traditional folk, canadiana, soul, rock and even some reggae. The Wild Romantics will deliver their explosive combination of folk, country and rock ‘n roll. Critically-praised Tourist Company land their synth-heavy alternative rock on stage to send us all back to Earth, with their rhythmic complexities and big soundscapes, after an out-of-this-world day of incredible live music, food and tasty craft beers and ciders.
Featuring more than 25 different beers from over 15 breweries from the Northwest and beyond, the Fruit Beer Festival is a celebration of the wonderful variety of flavours that fruits offer and the incredible and unique beers that the brewers can make with them. Festivities will kick off on August 24th at 1:00PM with juicy beer samples available all day until 6:00PM with an affordable shuttle from King George Station and Lougheed Town Station to move people in-and-out of the city so that you can sample without having to worry about driving to the valley.
After entry, you are invited to taste collaboration beers and fruits from over 15 craft breweries and farmers, snack on delicious ice cream from Banter Ice Cream, sample fruited kombucha from o5 Rare Tea Bar and refresh your palate with the curated palate cleanser bar, which will feature a selection of more rare and refreshing un-fruited beers. Expect to taste new and unique belgian-style beers, and american-style beers – alongside cherries, raspberries, blueberries, kiwis and more – from the likes of 33 Brewing Experiment, Luppolo Brewing Co., Field House Brewing, Four Winds Brewing, Garden Path Fermentation, House of Funk Brewing, Nickel Brook Brewing, o5 Rare Tea Bar, Silver Valley Brewing, Sundown Beer, Taylight Brewing, Temporal Artisan Ales, Twin Sails Brewing, Wild Ambition Brewing, and many, many more. Guests will not experience another 19+ farm market and fruit beer festival like this – it has not been done anywhere else. Early bird tickets go on sale March 23 at 10am.
For more information about Fruit Beer Festival or to purchase tickets for the festival, please visit: www.fruitbeer.ca
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