OCTOBER 2013
lamplighter.cooperyoung.org
ALSO INSIDE:
- FIRST CONGO TURNS 150 - MEMPHIS MADE BREWING - FESTIVAL AND 4-MILER PICS
THREE CHEERS! COOPER-YOUNG RAISES A GLASS TO SALUTE THE BREWS THIS MONTH
Photo from CY Regional Beerfest 2012 courtesy Amanda and Jonathan Hill
Beerfest ready to blow the cap off Cooper-Young Story by Toby Sells
Go get your Cooper-Young party hat back out of the closet because Beerfest is back and it’s better than ever. The Cooper-Young Regional Beerfest gets tapped on Saturday, Oct. 19 from 1 to 5 p.m. at a new location with a ton of new breweries, a bunch of your old-time favorites and fewer tickets sold (pro tip: that means more beer for you). The fourth-annual festival will be at Midtown Autowërks at 795 S Cooper. That’s just south of the Trestle Art and the I Love Memphis Mural. The all-volunteer Beerfest committee has been working and drinking for months to make this year’s festival not bigger but better. The festival ran short on beer last year (but we rallied with a beer run that made frat parties look like Temperance rallies) and making sure that didn’t happen again was job one for the Beerfest organizing committee this year. “There’s a delicate dance between how much beer these brewers tell us they’re going to bring
and how many tickets we sell — getting those two numbers just right,” said Beerfest committee chairman Mark Morrison. So, the committee asked brewers this year to commit to bringing a set amount of beer and agreed to sell fewer tickets than last year. With these forces guiding our planning, “there will definitely be more beer per person,” Morrison said, which also mean shorter lines. But not only more beer, but beers from breweries that have never been in the Memphis market and some you may only ever be able to get here at Beerfest. Missouri will be represented at the festival for the first time with St. Louis brewers Exit 6 and Urban Chestnut. Some Mississippi breweries will make their Memphis debuts with Southern Prohibition coming up from Hattiesburg and Crooked Letter coming from Ocean Springs. The new Memphis breweries will be represented, too, with Wiseacre, High Cotton and Memphis Made all on our roster. Memphis stalwarts Ghost River and Boscos will be with us, too. And, yes, 2012 favorite Country Boy Brewing, the rural rascals of Lexington, Ky., will be back with us, too. Continued on Page 10 LampLighter OCTOBER 2013 1