Guests at Beaver Stadium on May 11 can be the toast of the town when they experience the first Hoppy Valley Brewers Fest, an event designed for people to taste and then tout craft beers from around Pennsylvania and beyond.
The stadium’s 107,000 seats in the fall are filled with football fans cheering; patrons at this event will be on the field and able to tip their hats—and their cups—to seventy-five brewers and say … cheers!
It will be a four- to five-hour party on the plush, green grass inside the iconic stadium known nationwide for White Outs. With brewers offering beers from sweet to bitter and from full-bodied to light and pleasant, patrons will have a vast, cold-and-gold selection in front of them.
“I think everybody that’s involved is pretty excited about it,” says event organizer John Schaffer, manager of Antifragile Brewing Company on Calder Alley in State College. “The breweries will be set up along the exterior of the field and we’ll have seventy-five of them. They’re all very excited to be here in such an iconic venue.
“We have had a lot of alumni-owned breweries reach out, and we’ve reached out to a lot of breweries as well about bringing them in. We’ve had a very positive response from most of the breweries that we’ve reached out to.”
In early March, Schaffer said they were still waiting on an allowable occupancy number from the university but cited a hopeful estimate “in the neighborhood of 5,000 tickets.” Some of the event’s proceeds go to the Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association Educational Foundation awards and to the Happy Valley Sports and Entertainment Alliance, which would enable more community-based events to take place in the Centre County region.
The afternoon bash will go on rain or shine, Schaffer says, and a stage will be set up on the fifty-yard line, where bands such as The Skoal Brothers, Lowjack, Caledonia, and The Cow Poke and the Poet will provide live music. Concession stands outside the stadium’s tunnel entrance will offer a variety of foods, and hydration stations will be available on the field. With the cup that people receive when they enter, they’ll be able to get as many samples as can be responsibly poured for them.
The event has been in the works for well over a year and the behind-the-scenes work is seemingly endless. “I can’t even quantify the hours. It’s really a joint effort between the Happy Valley Sports and Entertainment Alliance, the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau, and the Antifragile Brewing Company,” Schaffer says.
“And we hired Celesta Powell to do a lot of logistics. She runs Central PA 4th Fest and the Central PA Tasting Trail. She has a lot of involvement in putting on events and she’s been an incredible asset to work with to get the finer points hammered out with the university and adding a lot of valuable perspective in what to include in events and what not to include.”
Schaffer says the impetus for staging this event is to enhance the craft beer knowledge and craft beer scene in this area. “We’re a little isolated geographically. We’re not like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, even Harrisburg,” Schaffer explains. “So the idea was create an event that would bring people to town, bring other brewers to town, encourage collaboration among brewers.
“We really want to turn this into a craft beer weekend. What I mean by that is getting the local establishments in on it, getting members of the Tasting Trail in on it, and breweries that are coming to participate in the festival could do Meet the Brewer events and Tap Takeovers on Friday night or Saturday after the Fest.”
The appeal of the Brewers Fest being held inside Beaver Stadium was not lost on Eric Engelbarts, executive director of the Happy Valley Sports and Entertainment Alliance. “I’m aware of the draw that stadium has but when we put up a website, I think there was one social media post and this thing blew up,” he says.
“I was in awe by the amount of people and the amount of interest, that it just caught fire. When this thing went live and people caught a glimpse of it, within twenty-four to forty-eight hours we had over 2,500 people sign up for the newsletter to get ticket updates. We were like, ‘Yeah, I think we’ve got something here.’”
The Hoppy Valley Brewers Fest is intended to be a true town and gown event. “I do feel that this event will promote tourism and people coming in to be part of the event but also gives those residents who live here something cool, something fun, something unique to be able to do in the summer,” Englebarts says. “The partnership between the university and the locals here, that’s kind of right where the Happy Valley Sports and Entertainment Alliance exists.” T&G
Jim Carlson is a freelance writer living in State College.
