Berea's Labor Day Oktoberfest

Every year, the husband and I enjoy visiting Berea's Labor Day Oktobefest. Specifically, we enjoy the Microbrew competition contained therein. What beer lover wouldn't love a handful of tickets, each good for a sample of German lager combined with a little yellow ballot soliciting your opinion of which beer is the best?

Therein lies the problem.

No one, not the people at the ticket booth, or the people at the beer tables, or even apparently the other beer festival goers seemed to know about the contest. After failed attempts at getting voting slips from the front desk and a few beer tables we finally found a couple crumpled and beer-soaked sitting on a brewer's tap cooler on the far end of the hall. They didn't even do us any good because when we tried to get them punched at the booths, the volunteers looked at us as though we had handed them the cryptex.

It wouldn't have been so bad if there weren't a dearth of good examples of beer. For the most part, we were underwhelemed. There weren't really too many bad beers, but there weren't all that many good ones either. I really wish we had been given the opportunity to give The Brew Kettle and Great Lakes Brewery the props they deserved.

Not that the whole evening was a wash. We got to hear Alex Meixner perform, and I have to say I was impressed. Not only that, but I always get a kick out of Schnitzelbank. It was a Good Damn Time.