Bottoms Up to American Craft Beer Week
Next week is an auspicious event for beer lovers everywhere: American Craft Beer Week, which runs from May 11-17 and serves as a "national celebration highlighting the culture and contributions of craft beer." Freda Moon got a head start this past weekend, and offers up some other great places to snag a beer and celebrate. 
An all-day downpour wasn't enough to keep a record crowd of 5,500 beer lovers from last Saturday's 13th Annual Legendary Boonville Beer Fest. Arriving en masse and in costume for the pirate-themed event, attendees paid $50 a person for four hours of all-you-can-drink access to over 100 beers from 43 craft breweries around the United States. Each was equipped with a five-ounce tasting glass and set loose to drink, dance and frolic in the mud at Mendocino County's fairgrounds in Boonville, Calif.
The festival, a fundraiser for local charities hosted by Anderson Valley Brewing Company, draws both connoisseurs and casual beer drinkers, people who come to taste and those that come to guzzle. Some arrived prepared for the festival's theme and Northern California's weather, wearing elaborate pirate garb or full-body rain gear. Many wore specialized glass holders around their necks to ensure they wouldn't break their irreplaceable, and therefore sacred, tasting glass. (The sound of one of these glasses breaking evokes a roaring, humiliating--if good-natured--howl from the beer fest crowd.) Others donned more eclectic ensembles, combinations of wigs, unicycles, kilts, star-shaped sunglasses and beer stickers on cheeks and foreheads. Because it was raining and the beer was flowing, a handful of participants paraded in nothing but mud and mud-covered skivvies.
Orignal From: Bottoms Up to American Craft Beer Week
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