Announcing the First Official Monktoberfest Craft Beer Swap

(image courtesy Allagash Brewing)

As we do every year, all of us here at RedMonk are trying to up the epic in an effort give you something you’ve never seen before at the Monktoberfest. To this end, we’ve got a great numbers of irons in the fire, so to speak, because in the craft beer world it’s never entirely clear what you’ll be able to pull off.

One item we need to make you aware of ahead of time, however, is the first official Monktoberfest Craft Beer Swap. As you might imagine, we’re fortunate enough to have people coming from all over the country. Even the world, to a lesser extent. Because of scaling challenges, the limited distribution abilities of smaller brewers and so on, many attendees will have never had the opportunity to sample beers that other attendees may take for granted. The breweries you frequent every day may be impossible to get to for your fellow attendees, and vice versa.

Our plan, which if we’re lucky will center around a Discourse forum, is to facilitate the trading of beers between Monktoberfest attendees. That’s all we can say right now, as we’re still working out the details, but we wanted to let you know early so that you can start cellaring some local rareities ahead of the show, because they just might turn into something you’ve never had before.

So cheers, and look for more details from us on the swap in the weeks ahead!