On May 11, Upland Brewing Company celebrated their Second Annual Midwest Sour Funk Wild Festival, a festival honoring beers fermented with wild bacteria and yeast.
Last year, we wanted to see if wild ales were popular enough to hold a festival. You’ve proved to us that, yes, we are on the right track. Once again, you overwhelmingly showed us that you love not only our sour and wild ales but celebrate the entire category with the love that we do. The Midwest Sour Wild Funk Fest had a 69% increase in attendance, along with a 100% increase in breweries and variety of beers, including three breweries who are not distributed in Indiana.
We made a few changes to our layout and attendance in order to provide you a better experience. We included a VIP presentation and tasting by our brewmaster Caleb Staton. Over the past eight years, Caleb has developed our program to the point that we are now nationally and internationally recognized for our sour and wild ales. Caleb spearheaded our wild ale program and has recently taken over production of these beers full time. We are very proud that the VIP session sold out within four minutes when tickets were released.
Another addition to this year’s event was the inclusion of non-wild beers such as Farmhouse Ales and Saisons. Although these beers are not necessarily wild fermented, the flavor profile of Farmhouse and Saisons are very similar to those in the wild/sour category and many times the former are made into wild ales. We felt, too, that this would provide a broader experience for attendees. We expanded the food selection and carefully paired artisan cheeses, meats, and fruit with beer, as well.
We thank you for supporting Upland Brewing Company and all of the midwestern breweries who are exploring these styles of beers. A special thank you goes out to the breweries who helped us make this event possible:
Barley Island
Bells
Bier Brewery
Black Acre
Bloomington Brewing Company
Boulevard
Brugge Brasserie
Crown Brewing
Cutters
Destihl
Flat 12 Bierwerks
Goose Island
Mad Anthony
New Belgium
Perennial
Rivertown
Sun King Brewing
Thirsty Dog
Triton
Starlight Distributors
World Class Beer
Save the date of Saturday, May 10, 2014 for the Third Annual Midwest Sour Wild Funk Festival.
