Back when I was a kid in the ‘90s, rock festivals were the hottest summer ticket. Nowadays, rock and roll may be dead (again!), but for a generation that’s grown up with an exploding craft beer scene, brewers are their rock stars, and beer festivals are the hip summer events du jour. Once again, one of the granddaddies of craft beer, Sierra Nevada, will be holding the event it bills as “the largest craft beer celebration”: Beer Camp on Tour—a multi-city beer festival that in 2016 featured more than 700 breweries serving up their beers across America.
Sierra Nevada originally launched Beer Camp in 2014 as a collaboration brewing project/traveling beer festival. In that inaugural year, the Chico-based brand brewed twelve different beers with twelve different breweries before travelling around the country on a bus to pour these unique creations in seven different cities. Along the way, any craft brewery that wanted to join in on the festivities and pour their beers alongside Sierra Nevada was welcome to do so – and hundreds did.
For 2017, the scope of the collaborations went global, once again featuring twelve beers made with twelve different breweries, but this time, Sierra Nevada teamed up with six international breweries as well as six American ones. Ayinger (Germany), Duvel (Belgium), Fuller’s (UK), Garage Project (New Zealand), Kiuchi (Japan) and Mikkeller (Denmark) were the international participants. Stateside, the collaborators were Avery (Colorado), Boneyard (Oregon), Saint Arnold (Texas), Surly (Minnesota), The Bruery (California) and Tree House (Massachusetts).
Despite the new global scope, the festivals will remain an American phenomenon. But this time around, eight cities will be graced with plenty of local music, local food trucks and beer from across the country and around the world. Things will kick off on June 3 with coinciding events in Portland, Maine, and San Francisco. The fest will be held in Chicago on June 10. Both Philadelphia and Raleigh will host Beer Camps on June 17. Austin and Long Beach, California, will have the fest on June 24. And things will wrap up in Seattle on June 30.
General admission tickets to each event are $55. If that’s too rich for your blood, or if you can’t get to a Beer Camp city, as has been the case in the past, the Beer Camp collaboration beers will be sold nationwide as part of a one-time only Beer Camp variety 12-pack.