Beer, Cocktails & Beverages

I love a good beer festival! This weekend, I got my first opportunity to attend the Parkville Microbrew Festival in Parkville, Missouri, now in its fifth year. The weather cooperated with a gorgeous Midwestern spring day, the crowd was big, I ran into old friends and made new ones, and of course, had a great time tasting beers and talking to brewers. (I love my job!)

The festival featured 20-plus local and regional brewers from Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska, and more beer styles than I could shake a stick at. And I had the same problem I always have - the tasting glass that looked so small when I started out seemed like a massive amount of beer when multiplied by 20 or 30 beers that were all listed on my "try this one first" list.

There's not enough room to cover everything in one blog, but a couple of styles caught my eye. Two of the brewers had smoked beers, which didn't so much bring to mind the peat smoke flavor of Scotch so much as they did the memory of drinking beer around a campfire or at a bar-b-que.

And several brewers had rye beers, which is definitely a different flavor from the more traditional ales. The ryes received good reviews, but it seemed like the runaway crowd favorite was a one-off brew from O'Fallon Brewery. The Rye American Pale Ale was the recipe of the winner of the St. Louis Brews Happy Holidays Homebrew Competition, Augie Altenbaumer. With 20% malted rye and hopped with a ridiculous amount of Simcoe hops, it was a truly beautiful brew. The floral aroma was so incredible, I threatened to wear it as perfume. (I still think it's a good idea.)