Food & Drink
Brew Ha-Ha
The city’s 6th annual Beer Week is on tap and bigger than ever.
Back when Joe Gold and Dominic Cantalupo, founded Baltimore Beer Week in 2008, there were only three such events in the country.
“Beer sales in America were sort of flat,” says Gold, a sales manager at Heavy Seas. “But the craft-beer industry is what’s driving any kind of growth. Back then, craft was about three percent of the market. Today, it’s more like eight or nine. Beer weeks were invented to raise awareness of that growth.”
The diversity of events during Baltimore Beer Week (October 10-19, which isn’t exactly a week, but who’s counting) has also grown. At first, it was typical pub crawls, beer-pairing dinners, pint nights, and tap takeovers at bars around the city.
More recently, though, venues have gotten creative—this year features an art show at WTMD, tap-handle-making workshops, a home brew and cheese night, and even pumpkin carving and pottery classes (full schedule available at baltimorebeerweek.com).
“Dominic and I are just the marketing arm behind this,” Gold says. “Like Restaurant Week, it’s the venues who are doing all the work. They dream all of these wacky, creative things up.”