I was fortunate enough to be able to get tickets and head down to DC for the first SAVOR event put on by the Brewers’ Association. It was held in the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in downtown DC. Being two blocks from the White House is an excellent landmark. It was held in three different sessions: Friday Evening, Saturday Afternoon, and Saturday Evening. Because of my long drive time from Cleveland Heights, OH to Washington, DC, I was only able to attend the Saturday Evening session.

The event included forty-eight brewers from across the country. Different from a beerfest, though, each beer was paired with food prepared by Federal City Catering. It was more like a wine/food reception I have been to before. The actual brewers were present in many cases. The only one I talked to for any length of time was Peter Bouckaert from New Belgium Brewing Company. I begged and pleaded with him to bring NB beers to Ohio, but he said it would likely be a couple years before they made it quite that far.

In addition to the main floor where the beers were presented, there were also informative seminars put on for the event. I attended Crossdrinking without Social Stigma, which was discussing the new trend in Food/Wine magazines to start including information about craft beer. The hour-long salon also included a three blind beer/food pairings put together by the presenters. The winner ended up being Dogfish Head’s Palo Santo Marron with parmesan cheese. Sam Caligione from Dogfish Head was a couple rows behind me and seemed quite pleased with the results.

It was a fantastic event, and I hope the BA decides to do it again next year. The only thing I would do differently would be to make the space a little bit bigger. All of those people packed into that auditorium became a little claustrophobic about an hour into it. I also got to meet Jeff Bearer from Craft Beer Radio. He sat in front of me during the salon, so I stopped up to say hi. I have never emailed the show, which I told him, and he mentioned that he was glad that there were actual people behind his 2,500 downloads of each show.