Brewfest 2016

Brewfest 2016 held on the Gay Street viaduct and Depot Street by the Southern Railway Terminal on the north end of downtown, is only a few weeks away on June 18th.  Get your tickets by June 1st to take advantage of early bird pricing.  I have attended this event 3 times in the past and will be there again in 2016.  Yes, you will wait forever to get in, yes it will be crowded, yes there will be lines for almost every beer, but yes it is totally worth it.  You will get plenty of beer, have plenty of room to hang out with friends and will not come across a friendlier large group of people.  It's also for charity, so go get your tickets now!

Knoxville Ale Trail

For a follow-up post I wanted to highlight the Knoxville Ale Trail.  The website from what I understand is a collaborative effort between KABA (The Knoxville Area Brewers Association) and Visit Knoxville, which is the official convention and visitors bureau for Knoxville.  The website is a great start to promoting the local beer scene here and getting an actual tourism organization involved is a great sign of the potential the city sees in what is happening with beer options in this town.  More out of town visitors and customers to our favorite breweries only helps keep them all here for our local enjoyment.  Let's hope this is a long and successful partnership.

The trail itself is not so much an actual trail you follow as it is a map and listing of all of the options available around town.  You are left to forge your own path to visit them all, on bike, foot or maybe via a car if you can secure a designated driver.  Speaking of designated driver's, Knox Brew Tours has a link on their site and run a great operation visiting several breweries around town while letting them do the driving.  I have been on one tour with them and can highly recommend them.  I hope to take another soon with more options to visit now available and write more about them here after I do.  The site also has information on hours and addresses of the local breweries to visit around town, links to another local beer related blog and other places that serve local craft beer.  The site is a great start to locals and visitors alike looking to find what is available to visit.  So glad they got a centralized listing of all the options going so soon after all of our expanded options opened up.  In looking at the brewery and beer options lists provided, it looks like several more places very well could be added soon as well.

As far as making your own trail from the site, biking is a great option for a few.  Alliance is almost counting on that fact with their placement near the Urban Wilderness bike trails.  A walking tour is becoming more and more possible as well, with several options a walkable distance from each other in and around downtown.  Look for another post on this later, as I hope to do at least one extensive walking tour this summer fitting in as many places as possible along the way.  Share any ideas on that if you have them, and enjoy trying to come up with your own Ale Trail using the resources provided.

Welcome to BeerKnox!

Welcome to what we hope is the start of something interesting and fun.  Knoxville is such a great town for many reasons and has really blossomed as of late.  A big part of Knoxville's recent allure has been a booming craft beer scene that has opened up numerous local beer choices for locals and visitors.  We hope to share a bit about what is out there, whether it be breweries, festivals, retail choices or just bars or pubs to enjoy great craft beer here in Knoxville.  We may even veer off into other areas as well from time to time, only time will tell.

Come back often for the latest and feel free to reach us via any of the social media or email options we've made available.  We'll share what we see and here and look forward to hearing back from you as well.

Thanks and look for the next post real soon!