Wet & Wild Parkville Microbrew Festival

As you undoubtedly saw on our Facebook album this year’s Parkville Microbrew Festival was a wet and wild time.  My hat is off not only to all the vendors who came out and showed off their beers but for the event organizers and volunteers who braved the rain.  Without these people the event obviously wouldn’t have been possible.  That being said I think the true “heroes” were the thousands of people who ventured out in the rain to sample all the glorious beer the roughly 90 beer vendors had brought out with them.   I will say, not all people were properly prepared though. I saw one gentleman wearing old Birkenstocks, shorts, a t-shirt, and he was using a trash bag as his poncho.  But for every person like this gentleman there were tons more who were properly prepared.  One group even brought out their own tailgating tent and set that up to keep themselves dry.

A sandal lost to the elements

While I was not in attendance for last years I was told I was told even before going that I should get ready to stand in lines.  This may be a sneaky benefit of all the rain though because there were hardly any lines at all this year.  My friends and I were able to just meander from one place to another trying any beer that struck our fancy and we were even able to stand around and talk with the vendors and sample most of their beers without feeling rushed.  While I could take you all through a step by step recreation of my beer journey I just want to hit on a few of personal highlights.

BYOT- Bring your Own Tent





I will say hands down my favorite part of the whole day were booths 70 to 85.  For those that weren’t there or even those who did and don’t have their map handy these was the section of booths that represented the home brewers.   There were Brewery clubs represented from all around Missouri and Kansas City and it cool being able to talk to all the home brewers about what special recipe they were trying out today.   From there I think the next best thing were all the smaller breweries that were not necessarily from the Kansas City area.  There was a handful of smaller breweries from all over the USA that were there just to show off their delicious beers and an even smaller subset of them that had just recently garnished deals with distributors to start selling in  our Area.

Overall the Microbrew festival was an amazing experience and rain or shine I plan on being in attendance next year! If you were unable to attend or haven’t checked out our photo album from the event make sure to check it out on Facebook.

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