SAVOR: an american craft beer and food experience

The big SAVOR event finally came. My sister, her fiancé, and two friends came in town again. We all very much enjoyed the first event last year and we were looking forward to the second iteration this year. 

There was only one large session as opposed to three different sessions last year. They improved the educational seminars this year and had probably twice as many to offer. Unfortunately all the seminars were full by the time the tickets went on sale to the public. Thankfully I had pre-sale rights due to attending last year. Still by the time I got tix almost all of the seminars were sold out except for Jim Koch of Sam Adams talking about extreme beer. He does brew the beer with the highest alcohol content in the world and one of the most expensive. 

Before the doors opened the line was already around the parking lot. We got in relatively fast though. We walked in and immediately started tasting fine brew and food. The place was full but it didn’t take long to refill our sample glass and pick up new bites. We started to tackle the booths on the floor in a sorta systematic manner. Two big advantages of this event over normal beer festivals is that the beer is served by actual members of the brewery and many had special not-very-distributed beers to taste. Although I did notice a few of the famous brewers I know were busy with seminars or other mingling. The food was a tad bit better than last year. And they didn’t run out. There were some fine bites, but only a few really complemented the beer they were paired with I thought. They also had a cheese table and oyster bar. 

The Sam Adams seminar was the last hour of the event. I got tix for Robin, my sister, and her fiancé. Somehow Robin convinced me to skip it. At the time I didn’t mind so much because I had yet to taste all the brews on the event floor and I knew I wasn’t a fan of insanely high alcohol beers. I passed the tix on to Mark and Michelle. My sister was looking out for me and brought out a sample of the Utopia and I think it was a 1993 version of the Double Bock. The Utopia wasn’t as strong as I thought it would be and had that velvety taste of mature beers. Of course I wasn’t exactly sober when I tasted it. It was a good night and we were all full and feeling good. Robin didn’t exactly make it home with us but that is another story.

A few pics from my sister