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Elgin Street Beer Fest returns next weekend

Vendors doubled for this year, more than 50 brews available
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The Townhouse Tavern and The Laughing Buddha will host the fourth annual Elgin Street Craft Beer Festival on Aug. 6. File photo.

The craft beer movement has been spreading across North America and Europe and is a huge part of beer culture.

In Sudbury, The Townhouse Tavern and The Laughing Buddha will host the fourth annual Elgin Street Craft Beer Festival on Aug. 6.

This festival is one of more than 45 beer festivals in Ontario alone. 

Hosts of the festival, The Laughing Buddha and Townehouse Tavern, recognize the changing tides of beer culture. 

For almost 30 years The Townehouse has been cracking bottles and changing kegs in Sudbury’s downtown. 

Since its opening in 2005, The Laughing Buddha has been Sudbury’s home for craft beer from around the region and around the world.

With a combined 26 draft taps and countless ales, lagers, sours, gruits, porters, stouts, ciders and more in the fridges, these establishments have a lot to offer lovers of beer in Northern Ontario. 

With all that product in house, what’s the need for a craft beer festival?

Mathieu St. Pierre, a manager at the establishments, says that The Elgin Street Craft Beer Festival brings more than the usual.

“The festival offers us and our patrons an opportunity to sample new product from the breweries, including microbrewed batches of limited edition beer and seasonal brews, limited edition series brews and guest brews," said St. Pierre.

"Of course there are always the tried and true favourites too.”

As usual, the festival takes over Grey Street between the Sudbury Arena and the Townehouse. The venue spreads across the the patios of the Townhouse and The Laughing Buddha as well as indoors at both restaurants. 

In its fourth year, this celebration of craft beer is gaining momentum and growing in more ways than one. 

St. Pierre says that the number of vendors has increased this year, with the number of unique brews doubling to upwards of fifty.

“Getting the opportunity to meet and chat with the beer reps and brew masters about the specifics of their beer is, to me, one of the most important aspects of the festival," said St. Pierre.

Beer drinking culture is obviously very social, and now we’re seeing a stronger community forming around it through the connections between beerdrinker and beermaker. In the end, we’re just trying to bring a little part of all these wonderful and unique breweries and people together for a great celebration of the almighty beer”.

As with any project The Townehouse Tavern takes on, you can also expect excellent live entertainment and good food. 

Keeping with the community spirit of craft brewing, the multistage entertainment setlist is comprised of local talent including, Nirvana Tribute, The Zeppelin, Josh Turnbull and The Bluez Brotherz. 

This year, the festival will begin on the Friday night with a street party where local musicians will perform Pink Floyd’s entire production of the 1979 classic, The Wall. 

Festival coordinators are also proud to announce that Eat Local Sudbury will be present as a food vendor on  Saturday in addition to the Sudbury favourites of pizza, sandwiches, burgers and more from the event’s host restaurants.

At the door, a weekend ticket is $35 and will get you into the Friday night Pink Floyd show as well as the Saturday beer festival or $25 for the Saturday only. 

Tickets get you a commemorative sample glass and three 4 ounce sample tickets. 

Beyond that, samples are $2 each. There is an advanced ticket purchase rate which will also get patrons entered into a draw to win a weekend trip to one of Ontario’s largest beer festivals, including admission and hotel accommodations.


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