Beer Festival Porn.

Festivals. Can't do them all, but thankfully the calendar starts to thick with them this time of year. I wonder if other geeks get as excited about their festivals as beer geeks do. Maybe. Anyway, for the beer geek who loves to travel, the festival calendar becomes a particular sort of pornography.

So, where to find your festivals? No doubt you have favorite sources already. There is the precisely named Beer Festival Calendar. Jeff Evans keeps a broad list at Inside Beer. For Belgians and belgophiles, Paul Briggs maintains his list (and I post it to the left). There are the Ratebeer and BeerAdvocate event calendars. And more.

Generally one can sort the fests and their locations into three categories: Wish I Could Go There, Maybe I Will Be There, and Hot Damn I Am Already There. Here are a few examples from my own perspective.

Wish I Could Go There: The most intriguing festival of 2012 is not in Copenhagen or Philadelphia or Moen. It's in Worcester, Mass., on June 24 and 25.

Co-organized by importers Shelton Brothers and 12%, here are two reasons why the event named simply The Festival is top-shelf: (1) the brewers themselves will be there, and (2) the sheer quality and breadth of those brewers (and the cider- and mead-makers too, let's not forget them). I can't think of another festival more likely to have so much excellence served by the people who actually, er, excel.

Pardon my cherry-picking, but among many more in attendance: Anchorage, Blaugies, Cantillon, Dochter van de Korenaar, de Molen, Drie Fonteinen, Haandbryggeriet, Hill Farmstead, Jandrain-Jandrenouille, Jester King, Jolly Pumpkin, Mikkeller, Pretty Things, Senne, Stillwater, Struise, Thiriez and Tilquin. Whew.

I was going to ask how they can afford to fly in all those brewers from around the world, but now we can guess: Tickets for a three-and-a-half-hour session are $100 $60 each. There are three sessions. A weekend pass to all three runs you $235 $160. Sadly not in my budget, but I understand why they are doing it how they are doing it. I intend to live vicariously through those who attend.*

UPDATED on May 4 to explain that my sloppy guess about flying in brewers was just that: sloppy. I'm told they are paying their own way. Also, the Shelton Brothers have dropped the ticket prices. Still pricey compared to typical beer festivals, but there is nothing typical about that one.

Maybe I Will Be There: We'll spend a chunk of our summer in the States this year, but our plans shift and flow like so much Mississippi mud. But one that's looking pretty fortuitous is the St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival, tentatively set for June 1 or 2. But as Evan Benn reported yesterday, the website is dead and the date might change. So we'll see.

One quirk of this festival is that the brand names of the beers get left behind at the festival gate. Instead of promoting a specific product, the breweries get together and provide the widest possible range of beer styles and recipes. You might know which brewery made that walnut brown ale, but the point is not who made it or what it's called, but the fact that this is what one particular walnut brown ale tastes like.

In fact, the next festival I'm about to mention plans to do the same thing. But instead of 80 or so different styles, there might be 15. And some of them will come from homebrewers.

Hot Damn I Am Already There: You surely know the old Frank Zappa quote about how you can't be a real country until you have a beer. But there are real countries and then there are real beer countries, so here is a corollary: You can't be a real beer country until you have a beer festival.

Costa Rica is about to get its first one of any consequence. The first Festival de Cerveza Artesanal is set for April 21 at Avenida Escazú. I reckon 98% of you have no hope of attending (maybe next year), but for those of you who are already here or with the wherewithal, tickets are available for 15,000 colones (about US$30) at the Bodega de Chema in Los Yoses, TicoBirra in Pavas, or Costa Rica's Craft Brewing in Cartago.

I won't use this blog to bang on about the festival, but I might use Twitter to relay information from the organizers. I'll be there, but not as a journalist or an organizer. I'll just be a homebrewer on that day.

ZBF Weekend is Growing Into a Liver-Eating Belgian Beer Week Monster. And I'm Cool With That.

The over-the-top craft beer weeks that have taken over some U.S. cities — like Philly and San Francisco — have no real analogue here in Belgium. But the closest thing might be ZBF weekend, which is gradually expanding into more than half a week. Now if someone would just plan stuff for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday — beer dinners? meet-the-brewer events? homebrew competition? — we'd be in business. (And in trouble.)

Its all built around the Zythos Beer Festival in Sint-Niklaas. More on that event later, which attracts plenty of traveling beer geeks. That makes it a good time for other places that like traveling beer geeks to organize to-dos.

For now, it starts Thursday, March 4, with the Pre-ZBF Festival at Lakebosschen castle in Oostkamp, not too far from Bruges. Click on that link to find a PDF with all details in English. (Note the excellent "beeriodic system" that represents the fest's beer list.) Organized chiefly by the Alvinne picobrewery, last year's success follows with beers from Alvinne, Struise and Urthel, Dutch brewery De Molen, plus British breweries Thornbridge and Brewdog. No doubt there will be other surprises.

The Thursday Pre-ZBF event is a "whisky and beer" experience from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Don't bother, it's already sold out. Friday is open to the wider public, though, with or without reservation, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Also on Friday: the Night of Great Thirst, out at the excellently named Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst (Insurance Against Great Thirst) in Eizeringen, not far west of Brussels. This is simply one of the world's best lambic cafés, and this event only happens every two years. It starts at 7 p.m., and all the major lambic makers are there... except for Cantillon. But that's OK, because...

Saturday is not just when ZBF starts. It's also Cantillon's semiannual Public Brewing Day. For those planning to hit ZBF later that day, what better way to start than coffee and croissants with the smell of cereals wafting through the air at Cantillon, bright and early?

For the rest of the weekend you've got to options: go two ZBF or drown yourself in Cantillon (and about 30 other top draft beers) at Moeder Lambic Fontainas. Or both.

Hard to go wrong, no matter which path you take.

The Amazing Before and After of the Amazing Japanese Pancake. Amazing!

So, the Missus and I just had some culinary adventures in the port of Amsterdam, a name I can't write without singing loudly to myself in cartoonish imitation of Jacques Brel or David Bowie. Surely everyone does that?

Highlights for us included plenty of falafel and beer. We're simple, hobbit-like folk who think with our bellies. I'm told we went to a concert and even a museum between meals.

The best feeding of the weekend was at the aptly named Japanese Pancake World. The specialty there is okonomiyaki; but you'll find "Japanese pancake" much easier to say I think. The literal translation is "grill what you like." To the Japanese this is ancient street food, often eaten at festivals. To us it's just damn tasty.

And now I imagine that somewhere in Japan there is a gourmet corn dog restaurant. Doesn't matter.

Mine was Hiroshima style. What's in there, anyway? A bit of batter, loads of cabbage, some corn, thin slices of pork... and a bunch of other things. Some little curly fish flakes. Noodles. Seaweed. Other odds and ends. This tall pile of stuff is cooked at medium heat on a griddle, slowly, squishing it down as some of the juices cook out. Finally it's turned upside-down (or right side up, if you prefer) and slathered with Worcestershire sauce and mayonnaise. You are encouraged to slather more and generously. I slathered like a slathering fool and was not disappointed. Every bite was a sweet-and-savory burst of yum.

The only thing this place was missing was some decent beer. Luckily one of Holland's best is a 10-minute walk away. The Arendsnest is atmospheric and very Dutch, showing great taste with its list of local beers. Pictured here is the Pek & Veren, a smoked stout from the Molen brewery.

I wanted more flavor from this one. You know, more contemplative sip-ability, considering its 8% strength. Instead it was dangerously smooth and quaffable. The smoke was almost too subtle.

It was awful purty though.