The new Traverse City Beer Week looks to add another way to celebrate the beauties of brew – through a decentralized celebration of craft brewing that focuses on our breweries, tap rooms and restaurants. Kalamazoo-based Imperial Beverage used this model to get the Kalamazoo Beer Week going:

“Traverse City Beer Week will help restaurants, bars, and retail locations to do what they do well even better,” says Ann Drummond, marketing and public relations with Imperial Beverage. “It’s not intended to pull consumers away from the places where craft beer is already appreciated. Instead, these events are fashioned for the sole purpose of craft beer appreciation, consumer education, and experiential learning in the breweries, brewpubs, restaurants and retail locations of Traverse City.”

Imperial Beverage, named Craft Beer Distributor of the Year in 2010, used the same model to create a successful Beer Week in Kalamazoo two years ago. The idea is not to organize a festival at all, she says, but to give local breweries and restaurants a chance to host their own events on their own premises while promoting closer relationships among brewers, chefs and retailers who sell craft beer.

For instance, a brewery or restaurant could schedule a “special release” tasting with a presentation by the brewer or a “vertical tasting” where participants can taste examples of the same beer from a series of consecutive release years. Or a restaurant could hold a workshop on how to pair beers with food, presentations on home brewing, tastings of special seasonal brews, cheese/beer pairings, and cooking demonstrations where beer is a featured ingredient in the recipe.

Stay tuned to Traverse City Beer Week updates at traversecity.com/beerweek or via Traverse City Beer Week on Facebook.

Photos courtesy Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau.