Brooklyn Brewery is in town all week with their MASH events, which consist of tastings, pairing/dinners, homebrewing, music, comedy, and discussion events. I would highly recommend catching some of this when they are in your town (
http://brooklynbrewerymash.com/ for schedule). Tonight's event was a roundtable with our local brewmasters/owners from Yazoo (Linus Hall), Jackalope (Bailey Spaulding) and Blackstone (Kent Miller), as well as the founder of Brooklyn Brewery (and one of the craft beer pioneers), Steve Hindy. Along with some great beer (all three local breweries broke out their new spring beers... Yazoo had their new Helles Bock, which isn't available until later in the week. Jackalope had their first lager, which also isn't available until Friday. Blackstone also brought their Maris Otter spring seasonal, which is the same one they've had for a few years, but is one of my favorites. Brooklyn brought swag (koozies, t-shirts, buttons, stickers, tattoos) as well as their Sorachi Ace saison. They also were demoing their new Brooklyn Brew Shop kits this week, and had one of those on display.)
But beyond the great beer, the discussion was even better. Topics ranged from the evolution of craft breweries, "crafty" beers, beer taxes, macro breweries, evolution of styles, development of breweries, etc. It was a great three hours. And all proceeds went to
http://www.stephaniesfight.org/, a charity set up to raise money for lung cancer awareness and treatment. Stephanie and Kent founded Blackstone back in the 1994 with award-winning homebrewer and author
Dave Miller. This was at a time when BMC held 99% of sales in TN, and there was no other craft brewery in sight. She was a true craft beer pioneer. Unfortunately, she succumbed a few weeks ago to lung cancer, and thus the charity was formed. Please consider donating if you can.
Also consider buying Steve's book (
http://www.amazon.com/The-Craft-Beer-Re ... teve+hindy). It's currently on my wish list and will become a purchase when it is available. He auctioned an advance copy of it at the event ($175 was the going rate, which he matched) for Stephanie's charity.
