Festivals: Brewsvegas 2015

February 25, 2015, by Crafty Pint

Festivals: Brewsvegas 2015

As we wandered the warm, raindrop-splattered streets of Brisbane during last year's inaugural Brewsvegas, a strange thought entered the Crafty mind. "I reckon I could live here, you know."

For someone who had abandoned the UK for a life in Melbourne and found the Victorian capital to exceed all expectations (sorry, Mum), this came as some surprise. The primary reason lay not so much in the fact that Brewsvegas was on but in the elements that went into making it. The parts were more than the sum of its whole. Or something like that.

In essence, there was a spirit of fun pouring forth from so many of the venues, whether they were hosting a festival event or not. There seemed to be none of the competition increasingly witnessed between beer venues elsewhere, rather a spirit of joyous collaboration, as well as hijinks, most notably in the form of the weeklong turf war between The Scratch and Tippler's Tap.

Sure, the scene is young and growing fast so is bound to have the frisson of the early stages of a passionate affair. But it really was a lot of fun to experience; and, seriously, what's not to like about a city where one bar features a giant model of a wooden rigger complete with cannons the staff can fire from behind the bar, another is called Bosc – short for Bar Of Social Conscience, which donates 20 percent of profits to a Mexican orphanage, and another has a massive, three piece light overhanging its bar that spells out IPA?

All of which is a longwinded way of getting around to telling you that the program for the second Brewsvegas is out. Running from March 22 to 29 , it is a festival that has grown in size from 90 to 120 events but, perhaps more importantly, grown even more in terms of participating venues: from 40 to 65.

Still run by staff from some of the city's smallest bars and breweries – with a couple of new additions to the organising committee in 2015 – in revealing their program this week, they promise: "There truly is something for everyone. From fine dining to fine art, baking and brewing, bands, bowls, mystery tours, massage, movie nights, competitive cook-offs, cocktails and collaborations of every kind."

You can check out the program and book tickets at the Brewsvegas site here.

Brewsvegas 2015 map by Art for Brews

Andrew Sydes, one of the festival's founders and part of the Green Beacon crew, told us: "We were really happy with the response and to see it grow from last year. It's great to have more events but the main thing is that the quality of the events is really, really high."

More new venues, breweries and brewing companies have opened since the first Brewsvegas, from the likes of the tiny White Lies Brewing at one end of the scale to James Squire's latest brewhouse at the other, with the latter brewing a collaboration for the festival with Newstead.

And there are more new announcements regarding the festival still to come.

"We'll be doing the Brewsvegas brew again like last year," says Andrew. "The idea is that it's a bit of a liquid poster that's available to all venues who are participating. We'll have [the Brewsvegas] decal in lots of venues during the week so even if they don't have an event on when someone is at the bar people will see it and ask about the festival.

"We're also staging a launch event as we realised last year that it's such a busy week with so much going on that there's never a chance to get together as a community as one to relax, have a beer and catch up."

The launch will take place the night before the rest of the program kicks off with details to be announced in the coming week. To keep in touch with developments, you may want to keep a note of the following social bits and bobs:

facebook.com/brewsvegas
twitter.com/brewsvegas
instagram.com/brewsvegas
#brewsvegas15

As for The Crafty Pint's relocation to Brisbane, well... it turns out we love Melbourne a little too much (and Celtic genes do not like humidity, no sirree). But will we be back at Brewsvegas? As everyone's favourite extremist Alaskan moron would say: "You betcha!"

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