It all started with a brass band and a dream to tour Europe, and serving up Boerne and regional beer paved the transatlantic path to its realization. Now in it’s fifth year, starting in 2017 and skipping 2020, the Boerne BierFest will fill five acres with beer from 30 area breweries.
On Saturday, Sept. 24, the community and folks from all over Texas will converge on The AgriCultural Museum and Arts Center for a day of beer tasting, music and competitions.
It all benefits the Hill Country Council for the Arts, which uses proceeds from the ticketed event to fund grants for various arts endeavors. The first year of the festivities raised $27,000 to send the Boerne Village Band, now in its 162nd year, to perform in several European countries, said Paula Horner, who heads the HCCA as president.
The next few years brought rain or cold and an outright cancellation in 2020, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, the only thing infectious at the open-air event was a good time.
“Last year was magical for us,” Horner said of good conditions for the celebration of local beer and culture. “We want to repeat that this year.”
The event raised $30,000 last year for the arts in Kendall and 18 other counties that fall under Hill Country in its role as the local entity representing the business of the American Council for the Arts.
Boerne is now home to five breweries – and growing. Adjacent counties Bandera, Bexar, Blanco, Comal, Gillespie and Kerr boast about three dozen additional breweries.
The 2014 stein holding competition champion, Jason Hurta, and 2016 champ Deryk Lindsey, both of New Braunfels, will be on hand to judge the Masskrugstemmen challenge where participants see who can hold a full-liter mug (the masskrug) out straight from their body the longest. For comparison’s sake, Hurta won the national championship in New York with a time of 14.02 minutes and Lindsey earned his title with a whopping 19.2 minutes, according to the U.S. Steinholding Association.
In other feats of the foam, fitness program Camp Gladiator puts on the popular keg-toss competition, and the winner of a homebrew competition, which chose this year’s still-undisclosed winner from among more than 30 entries, will be brewed for the festival and at the brewpub by Free Roam Brewing Co., one of Boerne’s newest masters of the sweet science of fermentation.
Free Roam’s general manager and co-founder, Brandon Phillips, stepped up this year to arrange for the festival beers. Advance tickets at $30 apiece and $35 at the door get Boerne BierFest attendees a souvenir-tasting stein and tickets for 10 tasters of beer. Additional tasting tickets can be purchased on site.
It takes about 198 volunteers to make an event like this happen, and most of the slots already have been filled.
Rob Ziegler, treasurer of the HCCA and former city councilman, said many of the kinks have been worked out over the years after “we kind of fumbled our way through it” the first year.
Part of the reason for the success was the involvement during the first four years of the festival by Fred Hernandez, who served as master of ceremonies and provided the beer expertise for many aspects of the event. Hernandez’s Boerne Brewing Co. was a victim of pandemic economics in Texas and closed its doors after a prolonged shutdown of its popular taproom.
Ziegler, who is retired from the wine business, said he is happy with Free Roam’s Phillips stepping up to select beer for the festival because of his deep knowledge that goes back to the storied California 21st Amendment brewery.
“Hopefully, he’s going to bring the cool and groovy stuff,” Ziegler said.
Travis E. Poling has been writing about Texas beer for 25 years and is co-author of two books on the subject including “San Antonio Beer: Alamo City History by the Pint.” Email him at [email protected].
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