Thursday, October 8, 2009

Beer festival coming to West Houston

My wife alerted me to a news release this morning announcing "Beer festival coming to West Houston". I was surprised and excited to hear the news as Houston hasn't had a "beer festival" in over 10 years. However, the excitement was soon replaced by disappointed after I dug around on the Internet and found the official website for the event:

West Houston gets its first festival devoted to the craft beer culture FOAM on the RANGE. Bringing to Texans what Texans love….QUALITY BEER! Over 25 handcrafted beers will be featured for sampling and local restaurants will offer optional food for your enjoyment!

Sounds great until you read the list of beers:

1554 Black Ale, Abbey Ale, Amstel Light, Blue Moon Family, Blue Paddle, Cusquena, Dos Equis, Fat Tire, Grolsh, Guiness, Guiness 250, Harp, Heineken, Leinenkugel Family, Mothership Wit, New Belgium Seasonal, Newcastle, Peroni, Pilsner Urquell, Red Stripe, Shiner Family, Tecate

Umm, not too many "handrafted beers" on that list and the only Texas beer listed is the "Shiner Family". How do you have a "Beer Festival" in Houston without having Saint Arnolds beers? Although it appears to be part of a larger Zest in the West event which provides scholarships to a nonprofit group, its looking more and more like an open house for the new City Center Houston development in disguise as a fundraising beer festival as the $15 ticket also includes "high rise living model tours". Its on Friday, Oct 23rd from 5pm ~ 8pm, so it could be a good diversion if you're stuck in traffic on I10 on the way home from work.

The City Center Houston development is home to a new Yard House location which is scheduled to open this November. I've been to a few of their other locations and was impressed with the food and the beer selection, so I'm excited to see them opening a location so close to my house.

3 comments:

assurbanipaul said...

This sounds surprisingly like our annual "Suds and Studs" beer festival in Grand Prairie (Dallas).

It is less a proper beer festival and more a promotional event for the distro to showcase what beers they carry.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I've recently moved into the Lofts at CityCentre and I'm not surprised to see its more of a promo than a proper fest. I am, however, still going to check it out -- and counting down the days for Yardhouse to open

Steve said...

It's certainly worth checking out since you leave there. Let us know how it is, perhaps it'll be better then it sounds. I can only hope the Yard House lives up to my expectations, as I live nearby and looking forward to finally having a good beer place on the West side.