Juneau Rotary held its fourth annual Capital Brewfest on Saturday. The annual event showcases dozens of specialty and craft beers from around the state and beyond.
This year, it’s estimated it will raise about $25,000 after expenses for the club and its charity partner United Way.
Ann Metcalfe headed up Juneau Rotary‘s Brewfest organizing committee. She said all 900 tickets sold out this year.
“You know, people were really anxious and hungry to have a beerfest here, so it sells out every year. We sold out this year on Wednesday before the event,” she said.
Metcalfe was eager to try Alaskan Brewing Company’s new pilot series coffee brown ale.
“And HooDoo has a nice Kolsch, um gosh, and the Homer folks, I’m hoping to get a little taste of that because we can’t get it down here. They have beautiful ales,” she said.
Sean McLaughlin is part of Alaskan’s brew crew. He explained what went into the new coffee brown.
“A pilot series, it’s a chance for us to showcase some unique beers, something special, something different. They’re a little more involved, a little more special ingredients. In this case it’s the special coffee extract cold press from Heritage Coffee,” McLaughlin said.
“We teamed up with Heritage Coffee, our local coffee roaster here in town, it was a kind of collaboration brew with them. We wanted to showcase two different styles. We’re using a English brown ale along with a Brazilian coffee. So it’s just a traditional based English brown, it’s about 7 percent alcohol, but infused with Brazilian cold coffee pressed extract. … And then we added that to the brew. We also took some of our malts, and we ran them through their coffee roaster, so we were able to pick up some of the oils and characteristics of the coffee roaster onto the malts, and then we ground them and used that into the brew.”
Morgan Petersen-Park stood out among the attendees.
“Well, an umbrella hat is actually a umbrella you wear on your head instead of holding it in your hand, so your hands are free, one, to eat, and two, mostly to drink beer,” she said. “Yeah, and honestly, for Brewfest, it is necessary. Especially when you have two glasses and only two hands. How do you deal if you have an umbrella? Well, you have an umbrella hat.”
Editor’s note: KTOO is a sponsor of Capital Brewfest.
Jeremy Hsieh is the deputy managing editor of the KTOO newsroom in Juneau. He’s a podcast fiend who’s worked in journalism since high school as a reporter, editor and television producer. He ran Gavel Alaska for 360 North from 2011 to 2016, and is big on experimenting with novel tools and mediums (including the occasional animated gif) to tell stories and demystify the news. Jeremy’s an East Coast transplant who moved to Juneau in 2008.
