Events and Local Beer News To Count Down The Days Til Microfestivus ’14, Plus a Couple Beers To Check Out At The Festival

A few days remain until Microfestivus, but here are a couple events happening between now and then to tide the Roanoke craft curious over, along with some new beer news from one of our local breweries and a couple of festival notes to check out as we get ready for the big event on Saturday!

Local Roots will be hosting a tap takeover event featuring Richmond’s Hardywood Park tomorrow night. Along with the brewery’s flagship Belgian Blonde style Singel, their Virginia Blackberry, a Belgian style wheat beer brewed with the obvious addition of Virginia grown blackberries, their Bourbon barrel aged Imperial IPA, the restaurant will also have their Czech style Pilsner on hand. The event begins at 6pm.

Recently, our own area’s Chaos Mountain Brewing (Callaway) produced a small batch of a Pilsner, available only at the brewery. Head Brewer Will Landry recently mentioned through email that the Czech style Pilsner, dubbed “Cross Czech” has been roughly outselling the other offerings nearly 2 to 1 at the brewery. Landry is currently working on a Belgian style beer made with an addition of rye malt as well as a smoked vanilla Porter. Both of those beers should be finishing up soon, though it is unclear whether or not they will be brewery only or not.

On Friday, Jack Brown’s in downtown Roanoke is hosting what their Facebook page is calling an all day steal the pint event featuring Dogfish Head, including a keg of their rarely seen on draft 120 Minute IPA. Their event page also alludes that the event will feature some of the brewery’s more rare offerings.

Among the more curious beer listings on the current Microfestivus beer lineup (available by pdf download on the event’s Facebook page) are two beers from Devils Backbone. One is simply listed as a “special release” which, if past offerings for the festival give any clue, may be a cask beer of some kind. The other is a Hefeweizen called “Trail Angel”, which looks like it may have spent some time as a beer available at the original Roseland, Va brewpub before beginning to show up as a rotating tap/seasonal offering from Devils Backbone just recently. Also, there is a mention in that same festival list of a “specialty TBD” beer from Bluegrass Brewing.