Last weekend my husband and I went to the NYC Craft Beer Festival, like we usually do. We missed last season, but we were back with a vengeance and we were so excited to go. These beer festivals are the highlight of each season. What can I say? We love our beer!

First of all, I want to give the Festival Team a huge shout out. Never has it been this organized and it was great that they had information on each beer readily available on the tables. That made the selection process a bit smoother. There is no way you can get through ALL of the beers and enjoy the ones you like if you have to taste all of them, so you want to know what you are tasting and select the type of beers that you know your pallet would like.

My husband is a thick stout fan and I can’t get my beers hoppy enough. The higher the IBU the better, preferably 100 and above. Yes, my taste buds are pretty much gone. We have our favorites but that does not mean we can’t enjoy beers that are of different styles, as long as they are made well.

We get asked the question a lot on how do you manage to choose from a selection of 130+ beers? Honestly, it can be tough but we have a set of criteria to make sure the beer is at the level we would like it to be. We look at the style and we go onto Beer Advocate and check out the ABV, Rating and IBU (for IPAs). For me I care about the rating more than anything. I would try anything above 85. I am not a pilsner fan but if anything new is in front of me or it has never been rated, I will try it, no matter the style.

For this season a few beers stood out to me. Evil Twin is a newer Danish/Brooklyn beer and they served their Liquid Double Fudge American Double and I loved it. Evil Twin has a way of continuously spitting out amazing beer one after the other so you can’t really go wrong with this brewery.

Southern Tier served their Choklat Orang. OMG! It was like a liquid dessert. Both my husband and I were in heaven. I could drink that beer all day long. Period! The best beer of the night, hands down.

One of the newer breweries surprised me. Night Shift Brewing had two beers both amazing. Awake (a stout) and Morph (a high IBU IPA). If you are looking for something new and not the usual craft beer breweries, give Night Shift a try.T here were A LOT of great beers. Such as Westbrook’s Siberian Black Magic Panther and Paradox’ Beaver Bite IPA.

If you are a lover of beer, this is your kind of event and with the team being even more organized than ever, it is a treat to walk around and try the different beers.

– Line