The fourth annual Charleston Oktoberfest was deemed a success by event organizers The Friends of Clay Center. The decent draft beer selection combined live music and a beautiful Saturday drew 335 thirsty people to the event. A beer competition was held and awards were given as follows:

Dark Beer Category: Penn Oktoberfest

Light Beer Category: Hoegaarden Witbier

Amber Beer Category: Great Lakes Burning River (second year as Amber Champ!)

(The above beers were judged by a selected six-person tasting panel using recognized blind-tasting procedures and guidelines organized by Chris Workman of the Greater Huntington Home Brewers Association)

The coveted People’s Choice Award was given to Blue Moon Pumpkin Ale (looks like I still have lots of work to do…)

Speaking of People’s Choice, I only hope that next year the event will draw more than 335 people and offer an even wider beer selection. One way the Friends might help increase attendance is to allow attendees to choose to pay a smaller entrance fee and then purchase beer tokens as needed. My feeling is that you will attract more couples and even many casual beer drinkers. There are many folks who feel they cannot get their 25 bucks’ worth or simply cannot spend $50 as a couple to attend such an event. Although I am not a member of Friends, I was the event co-chair for the first year and I want to see this thing become the premier beer event in West Virginia that it should be.

Oktoberfest has become an important fund raiser for The Friends of Clay Center, along with several other innovative and fun events. For more information, click here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.