In season 2 of the podcast, the Boozy Blondes announced they were asked to be the official bloggers of the 2023 Palatka Craft Beer Festival presented by the Palatka Rotary Club! (Episode 049) Now, with the 2024 Palatka Beer Fest approaching, the girls recap their experience last year and give listeners tips of what to expect, what to bring and what made this beer festival stand out!
The DOE for the episode is Untitled Art Cotton Candy IPA. If you know the Boozy Blondes, you know they love cotton candy – especially in boozy liquid form! This 6.3% hazy is packaged in the cutest, feminine can and tastes just like cotton candy! The girls love it!
The Palatka Craft Beer Festival is an annual event hosted by the Palatka Rotary Club at Riverfront Park every November. About 20 vendor booth attend, sharing unlimited tastings of their delicious craft beer with attendees! Adjacent to the park is a Hampton Inn, so the girls packed up the Boozy bros and Chrissy’s parents and settled into home base. The festival was right across the street!
The event offers two ticket options – general admission and VIP. With only $20 separating the two options ($45 for GA, $65 for VIP), it was an easy decision to go VIP. VIP ticket holders were allowed entry an hour early, we had a private VIP tent with complimentary food, and we were given a free Palatka Craft Beer Fest t-shirt! The event kicked off at noon for VIP ticket holders or 1pm for GA.
The extra hour gave the girls time to chat with the representatives on site and take their time enjoying the different beers. When the clock struck 1:00, the festival got slammed! It’s a very popular event so that extra hour was a great perk!
This festival offered a lot of great benefits:
- Unlimited tastings
- Custom souvenir tasting glass
- Complimentary bottles of water
- Complimentary hydration packs
- Food trucks on site
- Live music
- 2023 line up included Freyja and Chillula
There were about 20 breweries/vendors on site for the event, and the girls were lucky (and quick enough) to hit almost all of them! Be sure to listen to this episode to hear about what the girls sampled including the stand outs from the day.
- The Beast Hard Monster
- Azalea City Brewing Co.
- Cypress & Grove Brewing Co.
- Dogrose Brewing Co.
- Swamp Head Brewery
- Manifest Distillery
- Amelia Island Brewing Co. (Chrissy’s favorite of the day, Creamsicle Hardcraft Seltzer and Molly loved the coffee porter)
- Brick City Brewers
- Ace Premium Craft Ciders
- CASK (Cowford Ale Sharing Klub)
- Victory Brewing Co. (Chrissy loved the Berry Monkey Fruited Sour Triple – 9.5%!)
- Sun King Brewery (Molly’s favorite of the day – Orange Vanilla Sunlight)
- Armed Forces Brewing Co. (Chrissy and Molly both thought this brewery stood out. Great IPAs and Pale Session Lager)
- Veterans United Craft Brewery (The girls both found beers they loved here! Cup O’ Joe Oatmeal Espresso Stout for Chrissy and Wacky Badger for Molly)
- Islamorada Brewery & Distillery (both girls love the No Wake Zone Coconut Key Lime Ale)
- Southern Tier Brewing Co.
- Ancient City Brewing
- Bold City Brewery
- Cigar City Brewing
- Ormond Brewing Company
Following the festival the fun continued! The girls and their crew sat down for a meal at Velchoff’s, then wandered over to Azalea City Brewing for more drinks, card games and music! (by the way, you can learn all about Azalea City in Episode 035 in an interview with owner Andrea Canover – listen here!) By the time they left Azalea, they were hungry again, so they ventured through the streets of Palatka until they stumbled on Angel’s Dining Car, Florida’s Oldest Diner! Here Chrissy ordered her third burger of the day. And that put the exclamation point on our Palatka adventure – we took those burgers to go and ate them back at the hotel before calling it a night.
Be sure to keep an eye out for the 2024 Palatka Craft Beer Festival – coming soon!
Boozy Blondes 