I have a question for those of you who have attended it in the past: Does it have a lot of one-offs and rare stuff (like Firkin Fest and, to an extent, the Beer Dabbler Winter Fest), or is it more similar to the Casanova bash that has pretty much exclusively "every day" beers? I bought a pair of tix for the upcoming Fest on June 16, but a fairly large conflict has come up, and I'm trying to decide what to do. I've been to the site and saw the list of brewers, but it doesn't list what they'll be bringing. I appreciate your input!
I've only been once, last year. Compared to Winterfest or Firkin Fest, you'll see a lot more common beers. That being said there were still a few special beers here and there.
You'll get a decent amount of limited/one-offs... I went for these exclusively last year and made it all the way until the last hour. At that time I just enjoyed everything else at the fest.
I've been to every one of these and I thought it was pretty awful last year. 80% of breweries were doing bottle pours of year round beers. I won't be wasting my money again this year.
The guys who run it are pretty connected to the industry (not just people that specialize in organizing events) and this is their biggest fest, so there will likely be a good amount of interesting beer there. The Rochester fest they put on a few weeks back (which was much smaller and in a different market) had some cool beer so I anticipate the St. Paul fest will have even more.
