According to Beer Week Executive Director Dan Scott, the response was even better than the organizers had anticipated. “We had a lot of events on the calendar, and most of them were packed wall to wall. Overall, it got a lot of new people out to some places they hadn’t been before.”

The week started with more than 400 people at the historic Colonial Theatre celebrating Sacramento’s rich brewing history and sampling the beer from both new and established local breweries. Author and beer historian Ed Carroll talked about his new book, Sacramento Breweries, which chronicles the brewers that made pre-Prohibition Sacramento an important center of West Coast beer production. Rick Sellers of Pacific Brew News brought local history more up to date with a roll call of the brewers and breweries that have again made Sacramento a recognized brewing region.

From there, the week took off with daily beer seminars, beer dinners and food pairings, brewery open houses, brewmaster nights and brewery showcases, as well as numerous pint nights and beer specials. The range of participating businesses was impressive, from local bars featuring events with one of the many brewers and brewery representatives that descended on Sacramento for the week, to recognized local restaurants like Mulvaney’s B&L, which put on a well-attended pairing of local foods and craft beer. River City Brewing brought in Certified Cicerone Kevin Pratt to pair a wide range of unique Belgian, German and River City beers with a five-course meal that included hefeweizen Jell-O shots. No, really.

The events also ranged from the technical to the purely fun, including a draught beer seminar on proper pouring and dispensing, a homebrewing demonstration, a “women only” introduction to international beer styles, a group bicycle ride to bars serving Two Rivers Cider, and a weeklong scavenger hunt.

Many local breweries, from the new Odonata Beer Company to industry giant Anheuser-Busch, were involved with multiple events throughout the week and had brewers out to meet the public, as did outside breweries such as Lagunitas (from Petaluma) and Trumer Brauerei (from Berkeley). As Dan Scott remarked, “I didn’t know some of the breweries would do so many events and work so hard to make this a success. It was really a community-wide collaboration.”

For Sacramento’s beer community, the week offered many reasons to celebrate. According to Rubicon Brewing owner Glynn Phillips, the Rubicon had three record nights during the week, including a popular cask night that featured not only the Rubicon’s IPA, but beers from Auburn Alehouse, Bear Republic, Moylan’s, Sierra Nevada and Sudwerk. The cask ales, which were expected to last through the weekend, were gone by 8:00 p.m. on the night of the event.

According to other reports, the Golden Bear bar served a record 200 pints of Guinness on a rainy Monday night, the Streets of London pub ran out of its featured Sierra Nevada beer by 4:00 p.m., and the Odonata Beer night at the Pangaea Café had people lined up out the door for both the Belgian-inspired Odonata beers and the numerous Belgian beers available at the café on draught.

“I think it really opened the eyes of the wholesalers and breweries in town that Sacramentans are interested in good beer,” said Glynn Phillips. “It exceeded everyone’s expectations.”

Based on the success of the inaugural Sacramento Beer Week, Dan Scott expects next year’s event to incorporate even more participation by brewers throughout the region, including Stockton, Lodi and farther north of Sacramento.

Sacramento Beer Week was a great excuse for people to come out and experience a wide range of local and regional beers, meet the people who make them, and get introduced to new places that aren’t usually known for serving craft beer. Most important, as Rubicon Brewmaster Scott Cramlet said, “We made a lot of people happy last week.”

Also, check out Tom Dalldorf's article on the Sierra Foothills' activities during Sacramento Beer Week here!