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WELCOME TO GRAPEVINE & BEER

Texas' Best Kept Secret

NOT INTO WINE? DON’T WORRY, THERE’S BEER!

FOR THREE CRAZY DAYS IN MAY GRAPES ARE PUT BACK ON THE VINE AND IT’S ALL ABOUT THE HOPS!

With live music, acrobatic buskers, an amusement park, beer nosh and over 150 breweries showcasing their craft, Grapevine well and truly converts to Hopville.

We begin our day at the Tastes of Texas, a cordoned off zone with over a hundred different brews from fifty Texan craft geniuses. Brunch begins with a can of Doug, a delicious DDH NEIPA from Dallas’s Outfit Brewing. Doug has some kick at 7.1% and it’s a big day ahead so I decide to stick with the smaller taster glasses. Nine tasters later I tell everyone within earshot I’m moving to Texas.

It’s time to eat and we amble up Grapevine’s main street, now teeming with beer lovers. A guy driving and playing a piano on wheels cruises past and a busker in the distance looks to be standing on his partners head. I question whether the beer is making me see things.

There are food trucks parked down the centre of the street handing out all kinds of festival grub. We opt for the VIP Brews and Bites experience, an eight course beer and food matching extravaganza from the team at Shannon Brewing Company. There’s an educational side to it all but to be honest by the fourth taster my attention span is limited.

This year is also the inaugural Craft Brew Experience, a marquee with over one hundred more breweries from around the USA showing off their best. It’s been a pretty solid start to the day already, but we’re in Texas where everything is bigger so after a pickle shot at legendary Grapevine bar AJ’s I enter the fray like a drunken kid in a candy store.

I’m joined by Neil a qualified Cicerone, or “beer sommelier”. Neil’s beer palate is educated but when he suggests a sour my experienced palate takes over and I lose him quickly. I vote a hazy pale ale named Pseudo Sue from Toppling Goliath Brewing Co in Iowa my beer of the day, but let’s be honest after AJ’s pickle shot nothing really tastes the same.

I’m up early the following morning with a haze in my head no where near as pleasurable as Pseudo Sue. I have a vague recollection of drinking a martini in a speakeasy bar hidden behind a phone booth. My GoPro is nowhere to be seen and my Instagram has a story I have no recollection posting. I look damn happy though, arm in arm with Neil singing along with Little Texas, the headline band, rocking out on the main stage. It is exactly what a beer festival should be.

Footnote – GoPro was returned with even more unusual footage.

GRAPEVINE'S 30th ANNUAL MAIN STREET FESTIVAL
A Craft Brew Experience
May 17, 18 and 19th May 2024.

Click to LEARN MORE

See Grapevine through beer goggles.