Independents’ Day Festival has been growing in popularity each year since it’s launch in 2009. It has always been know for its focus on the arts: musicians, vendors, craftspeople at the heart of Columbus. An additional focus has been brewing in the minds of festival planners for this year’s event — beer.
I sat down over a couple pints with Jess Darkes who is leading the troops in “Local Drinkland,” as they call it, this year to discuss the changes.
For the first few years, Independents’ Day predominantly carried domestic beers with Pabst being a key sponsor. Once the festival moved from Downtown to Franklinton and local beers started being introduced, beer sales spiked almost 300%. Beer is becoming increasingly important to the festival, both from a revenue and guest standpoint.
Local Drinkland will highlight some of Columbus’ best known beer biz, including Actual Brewing, the Daily Growler, Four String Brewing, Lineage Brewing, North High Brewing, Rhinegeist Brewing, Seventh Son and Zauber. The Daily Growler will be on site pouring a selection of beers from other local breweries, the list of which is not yet available.
In addition to beer, Signature Wines, Brothers Drake, Middle West Spirits, Watershed Distillery and Rambling House Soda have claimed a spot in Drinkland. Rambling House and Brothers Drake are planning to offer a collaborative cocktail exclusively for the event.
Darkes isn’t just serving up a new beers, she is putting together a whole new reason to visit the festival. She’s adding to the event a homebrew competition, a short-format Knife Fight cooking competition between food truck chefs and restaurant chefs, and, my personal favorite, special offering limited releases from various breweries.
So, whether you’re watching your favorite band, buying the next Comic from Two Headed Monster or checking out an amazing new artist at the Wholly Craft booth, make sure you’ve got your local beer to pair.
Independents’ Day 2015 will take place September 19th from 11am-11pm and September 20th from 11am-8pm.
This is a guest post from Nichole Endicott. Nichole is the founder of the female-focused meetup group Brews ‘n Betties and can be seen slinging crafts at Lineage Brewing.
