Because Southwest Michigan loves its craft beer, there is
Kalamazoo Beer Week coming up Jan. 14 - 21. It’s the second annual celebration of hops and malts and all things brewed.
Programming for this week of events includes beer dinners, demonstrations, tastings, and meet-the-brewer functions. Intended to educate, offer insight into the craft beer movement, beers styles, or the industry at large, the events are open to the public.
The week is filled with events created by local restaurateurs and retailers who have teamed up with their favorite brewer or brewery. Each event concentrates on craft beer and will have a special element such as a bottle signing, a tasting or a presentation with remarks from the featured brewer.
Some of the events about which organizers are excited for participants to experience include a vertical tasting at Central City Tap House, in which ferkins for one style of beer from succeeding years are tapped to compare their tastes. Two more are events at the Kalamazoo Beer Exchange that will feature beer and cheese, with cheese from the Cheese Lady of Texas Township, and beer and chocolate with chocolate from Chocolatea in Portage.
The first Kalamazoo Beer Week grew out of a celebration of Imperial Beverage being named Craft Beer Distributor of the Year in 2010 by the National Beer and Wine Wholesalers. When an estimated 2,000 people turned out during dreadful winter weather to try new beers during the first Kalamazoo Beer Week organizers knew they had the makings of an ongoing communitywide event.
"We had no idea it would as popular as it was," says Anne Drummond of Imperial Beverage.
Imperial Beverage went on to collaborate with Discover Kalamazoo, the region's convention and visitor's bureau, to make plans for 2012. More partners agreed to participate. And what had been a week with 16 events in 2011 began to explode. This year, at least 80 different events are scheduled and 25 restaurants or retailers are hosting them. Many have multiple events throughout the week. A complete schedule of events and their locations is available
here.
Kalamazoo Beer Week also has all its social media bases covered, with a
blog,
Facebook page and
Twitter account. Participants are encouraged to tweet from events through week using the hashtag KBW2012.
Kalamazoo Beer Week gets under way Saturday, Jan. 14, with the Kick Off Pub Crawl. Participants ride for free on a double-decker bus that will stop at bars and restaurants that feature craft brews, including Gallagher's, Roadhouse, Waldo's (Pilsen Club), O'Duffy's, Central City Tap House, and Old Burdick's downtown location. The bus will travel in a loop between locations from 6 to 11 p.m. The pub crawl is sponsored by Samuel Adams.
Other partners in the weeklong event are: Millennium Restaurant Group, Greenleaf Hospitality Group, Paw Paw Wine Distributors, I.H.S. Distributing, Midwest Communications, Bell’s Brewery, Arcadia Ales and West Side Distributing.
Writer: Kathy Jennings, Second Wave
Source: Anne Drummond, Imperial Beverage
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