North Texas Beer Week 2013 is in the books. Over. Done. But it seems like it was only yesterday.
Maybe that’s still the Thanksgiving turkey coma talking, but I have to say I enjoyed every minute of this year’s week-long celebration of beer. Texas Brewvolution is my favorite Dallas beer festival thus far. It had a great balance of rare beers and local flavor and was just packed enough to stretch out and enjoy yourself. On the national scale, Great American Beer Festival still takes the cake, but, hey, it’s hard to top the biggest festival in the country.
I made my rounds all over town during the week, enjoying large gatherings that packed the venue and small events that were run at speakeasy volume levels up by the bar. It seemed that almost every beer-loving bar and restaurant in Dallas got into the action somehow.
If I had one complaint, it was that it didn’t quite take over the city. I knew it was beer week. My friends knew it was beer week. But did DALLAS know it was beer week. I’m not so sure.
The “speakeasy” events I mentioned might have contributed to the problem. No signage. No grand announcements. You might not have even known they had one of the rarest beers in the city available if you didn’t see it on the North Texas Beer Week website and then approach the bartender to ask. And that, my friends, is a shame.
The beer scene is Dallas has arrived. It’s growing more and more each day. When we celebrate a week-long festival, I say we make it known.
But at the same time, I’m happy that we’ve gotten to where we are, that a beer week of this magnitude can come together in Dallas. We’ve come a long way.
Jamie Fulton put it best on the Community Brewer’s Blog:
How could we have even thought of having North Texas Beer Week ten years ago? That would have been a sad week indeed for craft beer lovers. While there were a few breweries around, there is no comparison to the plethora in the current marketplace. Just this past weekend, Texas brewers brought home ten medals in the biggest beer competition in the nation and the world! It was unforgettable to see Texas represented so well, unlike any year past I have been. The camaraderie is healthy too; nearly all the Texas brewers were sitting together cheering each other’s win.