Is anyone interested in participating?  Details below from Mak Sprague…

Saturday, Sept 3rd, Noon-3:30pm and 5-8:30pm —- Sunday, Sept 4th, Noon-3:30pm

The Portland Company Complex, 58 Fore Street, Portland, 04101

6,000 total attendees, 25+ brewers, 75 varieties of beer, cider and mead

Compared to the Maine Brewers we have more brewers (& out-of-state brewers), the same number of attendees but 2x the space, no live music, and homebrewing.

Being a cider and beer home brewer myself, I have dedicated about 20% of the floorplan to homebrewing.  Maine Brewing Supply will be helping to create displays and facilitate live brewing demonstrations.  I will be trucking in the tractor-powered cidering equipment my father and I built from scratch.

I believe that by participating in the event, homebrew clubs will benefit by: (1) raising awareness of your club and homebrewing in general through direct interaction with thousands of people, (2) venue for a club brewing event, and (3) establish and strengthen connections with commercial brewers.

Having discussed this with many homebrew clubs (and commercial brewers), I believe we have a path to pouring homebrew recipies at future shows: (1) Establish relationships with commercial brewers.  (2) Establish a homebrew competition to occur summer 2012. (3) Get commercial brewers to put their name on certain varietal competitions, such as the “Shipyard Ale Award” or the “Alagash Belgian Award”.  (4) These brewers, especially the large ones, participate in the GABF out west, which includes the Pro-Am competition.  If we bring 200-300 beers to these guys and make it easy for them to choose, we’ve gone most of the way to making this a reality.  

Our website:  http://www.portlandbrewfestival.com 

We’re also on facebook and twitter.

You should see our advertisements coming out in Beer Advocate, Yankee Brew News, All about Beer, Brew your Own, Portland Press Herald, the Phoenix, and a few others.

WCYY and WBLM commercials are in the works.

PBF2011 Brewer Contract