Atlantic City Beer & Music Festival Recap
The Atlantic City Beer & Music Festival was a wild weekend full of great beer, food trucks, activities, and live performances from talented musicians and carnival-esq performers. AC Beerfest is not your typical, carbon copy brew festival. A lot of attention, planning and genuine love by the Good Time Tricycle team went into producing this extraordinary event.
The event boasted over 130 breweries with a few cideries and even our favorite meadery pouring up a storm for us and 14,000+ of our closest friends. The event takes place on the massive and historic Bader Field. The runways are perfectly divided into quadrants of breweries, mixing in a few vendors of all types (apparel, desserts, and pickles to name a few). Towards the back of the field is the main stage with non-stop jam bands bringing great vibes and column of food trucks with delectable dishes. Both Saturday and Sunday had perfect weather this year (mid 70’s with a light breeze coming off the ocean) and just enough spotted cloud cover to develop the coveted brewfest farmer’s tan.
With over 500 different brews, cider and mead it is downright impossible to keep up on Untappd. So please enjoy our list of the most memorable pours from the weekend and see if you can get your hands on them.
Clowning Around with Shrek and Marshmallows
Heavy Reel Brewing Co. brought in a crowd pleaser, the LUVV: Orange Creamsicle (a delicious pastry sour) but their Drowning Clown IPA had one of the funniest names and backstories from the brew festival. Just imagine: there is a clown out there, somewhere at the bottom of the ocean waiting to be rescued years after hurricane Sandy. Godspeed Mr. Clown and thanks for the IPA
Is it really a beerfestival without invoking the ghost of Shrek? No, it isn’t and Coho Brewing Co. knew that when they broke out their “Not the Gumdrop Buttons!” This amber ale had hints of ginger, cinnamon, allspice, vanilla, brown sugar, clove and nutmeg. Yes, a tad out of season but also a welcomed change of pace and a standout for sure. They also had Beer Nog – yes, exactly what it sounds like, and yes it does contain eggs.
Ross Brewing Company still hasn’t opened their doors yet, but they’re dropping big flavors to your local bottle shops. They had a full complement of kegs and styles to choose from, but the Razzmello Berliner Weisse was probably our favorite dessert beer of the day. Robust raspberry flavors mixed with marshmallow? Yes please.
Canned Nostalgia
Nostalgic brews just hit different. Our favorite Cape May Brewing Co. offering over the weekend was The Purp, a grape shandy. The shandy was more akin to the grape sodas of yesteryear, you know, the ones that our parents begrudgingly bought us. The mouth staining, super sweet and ridiculously delicious ones! The Purp makes for a perfect summer sipper by the poolside with hotdogs and burgers.
Speaking of nostalgia, blue raspberry and cotton candy aren’t just for kids anymore. Fort Nonsense Brewing Company brewed up a super blue batch of “LOVE by Nonsense.” The sour beer was definitely sour, but also nostalgic candy flavor sweet. The crazy color only adds to the memorableness of this beer. Also in support of Pride Month, a portion of this beer’s proceeds are donated to support The Trevor Project.
Pickles & Honey
It would be lunacy not to mention the Lunacy Brewing Company collaboration with Peace Love Pickles! That’s right, LBC brought in a pickle gose and it was fantastic. It conjured up memories of our trip down to Texas and experiencing fresh Best Maid Sour Pickle Beer from Martin House. If you’re a fan of pickles you must try Peace, Love and Pickles Gose and also check out Peace Love Pickles for a pickle sandwich.
Our last memorable mention on this list is an old favorite of ours, and the first meadery we’ve ever visited. If you’re unfamiliar with Moonlight Meadery, you need to seek out their meads. They brought along their award winning Kurts Apple Pie Mead, and the Little Apples cider. However, they did not bring Utopian. Utopian is their mead aged in Samuel Adams Utopia barrels. We’ve only had that mead once, while we visited on New Years Eve, and it is an extraordinary experience.
2023
Huge shoutout to the ACBF crew for putting on an amazing event and for the giveaway tickets! We hope to see you and all of our favorite breweries back next year! More photos here on the gram!
