2020 Beerfest

February 22, 2020

Green grass and high temps(’40s) brought waves of committed or ones that should be committed to the hallowed cockles of Pembroke for the 4th annual Crooked Antler Beerfest. Maybe the promise of beer and deer with the chance to be corn hole champ helped too.                                                                                                                              

We upgraded this year to have a private chef on hand to smoke our deer, brisket, ribs, and chicken. Mike “Canal Rat” Cabral did an amazing job of creating a culinary story with all of the proteins.

Now although the food was amazing we came here for the beer.

With 28 official beer entries this year and additionally a new separate category for home brewing, we were stacked up for an afternoon of eating and drinking beer.

The big winner this year was the local brewery, Vitamin Sea Brewing. They took the win for 2020 with their double IPA Deeper Shade of Blue and rounded out the lower podium position with another DIPA called Footsteps in the Sand. They had four total entries, all getting votes and three beers in our top ten for the day. Stellwagen Beer Company, another local brewery had three entries with very strong voting for yet another DIPA and a surprise Sour ale. One of the biggest surprises was the absence of last year’s winning brewhouse, Trillium Brewing Company from any podium spots or even a single vote.

We were flooded with double, triple, New England and American IPAs. Sadly this year didn’t include a single Porter, Stout or Brown Ale. Missing the unicorn-esk Quad IPA as well.

The homebrew category was a true competition. Cam keeping his promise delivered a winning NEIPA. He nicknamed it; Mark 5. Oddly there was another entry nicknamed; Mark 6. Coincidence, you decide?

Although plenty warm out, we like fire. For safety reasons of course.

After almost three and a half hours of intense voting and debate. Stace was the big winner today pulling down not just the grand prize but third place as well. The rules committee will hard at work to make sure this doesn’t again. He also was showboating too and asked for help from Cory hold up one end of the check. Good luck next year, Stace.

Gang signs are usually frowned on but considering this was the host and the biggest guy with an electrified vest on we let this slide this one time. Chris brought our second place beer. For a guy who brought a beer from “Winter Hill” brewery and talked about working in Boston all the time and something about cement, maybe there was some persuasion going on here, I’m not going to question the guy.

See Winter Hill reference; Anyone seen Whitey?

With the completion of voting the deck cleared and we got to playing flashlight tag and cornhole.

As mentioned before fire is an active part of this event not EQUAL part, bring your own tree next year Canal Rat.

This was another great addition to our annual event. With a few new faces added to the stack of already great people who make this event worth repeating and always actively working to make it better. We thank all who came and those to donated their time and money to a very successful 2020 Crook Antler Beerfest.

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