America on Tap - Hawaii

[Tknishi]

Hey guys, I'm heading to the America on tap beer festival tomorrow night. Its sold out, so I'm assuming long lines to taste the different beers. Can anybody recommend from the list at the bottom of the page (http://americaontap.com/honolulu-hi/#), what beers I definitely have to try, as I doubt I will be able to try all of them.

Any input is appreciated, thanks!

 

[microbusbrewery]

My plan for most festivals is pick out a few must-try brews/breweries and hit them first, then wander around and try stuff you haven't heard of before. That looks like a pretty sweet festival. Some that I'd recommend as must-try:

Breakside
Cascade
Golden Road
Green Flash
Ommegang

 

[RedlegEd]

Wow, no wonder they're sold out! Like microbusbrewery said, "That looks like a pretty sweet festival." The beers on the list let you go the full range of beer styles, ciders and hard sodas, so it's hard to make recommendations since you didn't give any indication of your taste preferences. Are you a hophead, do you tend toward the dark & malty side, or do you like Heffes and fruit beers? You can also use this as a great way to get away from your usual fare, and try something new and exciting. No matter what, I'll bet you have a great time! Please let us know how it was.

 

[RedlegEd]

@tknishi. So, how was it, did you keep track of what you tried?

 

[Tknishi]

The event was fun, although nothing was really on tap, everything was mostly bottles. Either way, still got to try a lot of beers, although they all got a little mixed up in my head by the end of the night.

I'm a west coast IPA kind of drinker, so I mostly looked for those. I did like the IPAs from 10 Barrell, the Ommegang 3 philosphers was tasty, and I'm usually not a big Belgian style fan.

Besides the beer being bottles, another negative was that it was just hired event staff people pouring the beer, they knew nothing about the beer they were pouring.

 

[andvari7]

That's why I skipped this year's Madison event. Clueless staff, iffy organization, few taps. Plus, the next day was my nephew's baptism, and I didn't want to be hung over.