Hobart Brews Up a Great Time at the 2017 Brews and Blues Festival

Hobart Brews Up a Great Time at the 2017 Brews and Blues Festival

The 2017 Hobart Brews and Blues Festival made sure to brew up a good time for guests that attended the event on a beautiful Saturday. The event offered a great way to cool off on a hot day with a nice cold beer, all while supporting a great cause!

The fourth annual Brews and Blues Festival was an event hosted by the Hobart Parks Department that brought local brewers and the community together. Brews, blues music, amazing food, and friendship attracted over three hundred people to this event. With over twenty different breweries to pick from and each offering multiple styles of each brew, guests enjoyed plenty of variety.

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“It is an all-inclusive kind of event; it’s not for one certain guest,” explained Leslie Bailey, Promotions Manager at Indiana Beverage. “Everybody is sure to enjoy something and find something they like here.”

Brewfests have become much more popular during Bailey’s sixteen years working at Indiana Beverage. The Hobart Parks District and Indiana Beverage, a local, family owned distributor, have partnered together since the events beginnings. The success of beer gardents launched the idea of the Brews and Blues Festival. Fundraising was a crucial part in the origin of this event as Nikki Lopez, the Event Director for the city of Hobart explained.

“We do this event as a fundraiser for the Parks Department to kind of build our budget back up. It is our only ticketed event of the year.” Lopez explained. “This event is really important because it allows us to fund all of the free events that we do throughout the season.”

Not only did the event support a great cause but it helped local brewers by making new customers aware of their product.

“Anything that we can do to bring people to downtown Hobart, is a positive thing,” Lopez explained. “We try to include our local downtown businesses in the event as much as possible.”

Locals, like Michelle Finch, came out to this event to support their community. For locals this event brought together friends, families, and brew lovers. The event was even a big high school reunion for some.

“They are very family oriented,” Finch stated. “You see all your friends. Hobart is a small town everybody knows everybody, so it is kind of like a reunion every summer.”

Finch also described the music that brought many people out.

“The music is always good and it’s entertaining,” Finch said. “You get a group of friends and you just hang out. You try out several different samples of brews.”

The headlining act of the night was The Kinsey Report. They have performed at the Brews and Blues Festival since it started. Many people enjoy seeing this band knowing that the drummer played with Bob Marley and the Wailers, and that the brothers are children of blues legend, Lester "Big Daddy" Kinsey.

The Hobart Parks District certainly puts the “fun” in fundraising for this Brews and Blues Festival. No matter what type of brew someone may enjoy this festival is sure to please. Aside from beer, the festival boasts great food, music, old classmates, and community fun. The event entertained the city of Hobart for the entire evening.

“The Festival is a great way to end the summer as one last hurrah and to get everybody back out again,” said Lopez.