Taste the Rarity 2018 Beer Fest • The Spirited Traveler

Taste the Rarity: A Memphis Beer Festival

This past Saturday was Wiseacre Brewery’s 5th annual Taste the Rarity beer fest. Once again, The Spirited Traveler was invited to cover this wonderful cornucopia of craft beers from over 30 breweries all across the United States. For a complete list of brewers in attendance, click here. Now, without further ado, let me jump into the good stuff: my favorite brews, my favorite labels (there were some really nice ones this year), and of course, my overall take.

All Types of Beer

Last year, I noticed there were lots of stouts in attendance at Taste the Rarity. This year, I must say I noticed a plethora of sour beers! Sour beers are one of my favorite types of beer (2nd only to hefeweizens). The amount of sours present stood out mostly for two reasons:

(1) There were only like 3 sours last year (and it at was very hot out)
(2) It was FREEZING this year (around 47º) and I generally consider sours more of a warm weather brew, but I’d not seen this many sours at one event before. I was my just my lucky day I guess. 🙂

My top 3 favorite sours of the day were: (and this was hard because there were so many good ones)

1. Fraggle Rock- Union Brewing A delightful strawberry and rhubarb sour

2. Peach Katy- 2nd Shift Brewing Delicious and peachy

3. Press Tart- Rhinegiest just lovely and sour and crisp

Some other standouts for me were:

♥Best IPA: Cherry Pie- Green Bench Brewery–To know me is to KNOW I don’t like IPAs, but this one is very enjoyable as it is flavorful and doesn’t have a bitter, hoppy finish.

♥Best Cider: Graffic Content- Long Road Cider Company– I LOVE ciders as well, easily my 3rd favorite beer category. Graffic Content combines my love of sours and ciders into one delicious vessel.

♥Best Year after Year: Cindergeist Bubbles- Rhinegeist Brewery– I had this one last year, and it’s still one of my favorites. Bubbles is a rose ale with flavors of apple, peach, and cranberry. Simply delicious and not overly sweet.

Beer Labels

I must say, a lot of breweries have really stepped their label games up. I saw some very pretty, artistic ones, as well as some way out there ones at the beer fest. Here are a few of my favs:

The Special Entertainment

Wiseacre does a great job in not only providing us with loads of good beer to try, but they keep the atmosphere going with all sorts of live entertainment. This year, The Memphis Grizz Line welcomed us to the event with lively percussion, as they did last year. We also had Big Barton and the Mighty Soul Brass Band on hand to entertain us with some great music. But I will say, I was most surprised to see the live wrestling match (that’s “wrasslin” if you’re from Memphis-lol).

Check out the rest of the pics from the 2018 Taste the Rarity beer fest below. And don’t forget to stop by the Wiseacre tap room and get a fresh pour of some tasty craft beer.