The 2012 version of the Jupiter Craft Brewers Festival will be much the same as the previous five, and that’s a good thing.

Online tickets have sold out, but 1,500 more will be available on fest day. In this case, good things do come to those who wait as the vast majority in the queue will make it inside.

For those who don’t, there’s the second annual Craftoberfest across the street at Abacoa Green. No ticket needed here, just "an ID and a smile," which fest organizer Fran Andrewlevich says will get you a choice of several quality craft beers in a souvenir cup. Live oompah music is provided on the side for free.

How do I love thee, Jupiter Craft Brewers Festival? Let me count the ways:

5. The Silent Disco: I never participate in the activity in an effort to retain the few remaining shreds of dignity I still possess. But it’s really fun to watch, because the dancers are all wearing headphones (so we don’t hear the music) and most have gleefully left their dignity at the entrance.

4. The Intimate Atmosphere: The fest could be huge by now, but organizers have kept the event from growing out of control or turning into a "drunk fest" by limiting the number of tickets sold to about 3,000. It does get fairly packed in its confined space, but the fest feels like a big lawn party with mellow live music and the best beer selection you could ever imagine.

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Pratt & Whitney's 'After Burn' chili. (Brandon Kruse / Palm Beach Post)

So what’s the deal with firefighters and chili? The two seem to just go together, be it at the firehouse or at weekend charity cook-offs.

How did this bond begin, I wondered? Was it a culinary time-killer for a job which often has long periods between calls? Was it a fascination with varying degrees of heat comparable to what is faced on the job?

I did some digging and, while, I may not have found the definitive answer, I picked up a little chili trivia.

The spicy stew has been an American staple as far back as the frontier days. But in the early 1960s, a Texas newspaper man named Wick Fowler invented “Two Alarm Chili,” borrowing the common fire station term in the naming process. Wick also began the cultural phenomenon of chili cook-offs in 1967 when he challenged a fellow journalist to a chili-making duel.

If that’s not a smoking jalapeño of a historical connection (to chili and firefighters), I don’t know what is.
A couple of months ago, firefighters from across our area continued this tradition at a friendly — but fiercely competitive — chili cook-off and beer tasting, hosted by the Tequesta Fire Fighters and Tequesta Brewing Company.
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The Suds: Innis & Gunn Original Oak Aged Beer, Edinburgh, Scotland

The Skinny: This beer was “born by accident.” Originally used to give ale flavor to oak whisky barrels, workers discovered the beer they were dumping out was “absolutely delicious.” I agree. Notes of vanilla, toffee and oak give Innis & Gunn a unique and elegant flavor, perfect for the chilly weather coming our way.

The Score: 9 out of 10 mugs!

The Sellers: AJ’s Beer City, Jupiter. BX Beer Depot, Lake Worth. Total Wine, all locations. ABC Liquors, all locations. Whole Foods, all locations.

(Rum Cask and Highland 18 Cask aged brothers are available as well.)

Gnarly Barley, an American pale ale beer, is one of the more than half a dozen beers brewed locally by Tequesta Brewing Co. (Bill Ingram/Palm Beach Post)

Nothing puts out the fire of a hot bowl of chili like a frosty, craft-brewed beer. And there will be plenty of both Saturday when Tequesta firefighters team up with the Tequesta Brewing Co. to host their first Chili Cook-Off and Beer Tasting event.

The event raises money for Honor Flight, an organization that sends World War II veterans to Washington, D.C., to visit the World War II Memorial at no cost to them.

Thirty bucks ($35 at the door) will get you the opportunity to do the right thing while enjoying the four-alarm chili cooked up by firefighters from across our area and samples of deftly created craft brew from TBC, along with live music and an appearance of the Florida Firefighters Calender Girls. Read the full story

(Associated Press)

Nearly 200 different craft beers from breweries near and far will flow Saturday at this year’s Fourth Annual Treasure Coast Beer Festival (TCBF4). The Beer Guy offers this primer on the sudsy event:

WHEN: Saturday, from 1 to 5 p.m.

WHERE: City Hall Parking Garage, 100 N US 1, Fort Pierce. The festival takes place once again on the first floor of the garage. The south entrance, on Orange Avenue, will be closed during the festival. | Directions, invite friends, more.

Those wishing to park on the garage’s upper levels should use the north entrance on Avenue A, which will be open for event parking only. Read the full story

(Mathias Schrader/AP).

It’s that time of year when the leaves burst with colors and the chilly northern breezes make their way … OK, we don’t get any of that for a while yet, but we do get the seasonal fall selections of craft beers, which have been on the shelves for weeks now and can almost make it seem kind of October-festy in South Florida.

In anticipation of Oktoberfest, I recently attended a “celebratory beer tasting” at Café Boulud in Palm Beach, showcasing the seasonal beers available throughout the fall and featuring canapé pairings by executive chef Jim Leiken. The Beer Guy and Palm Beach? Not something in my normal wheelhouse, but what the hey? I dusted off my black blazer, Googled the word ‘canapé’ (oh, appetizers!) and was on my way. Read the full story

Tabica Grill in Jupiter is hosting a Belgium Tour Beer Dinner Sept. 16 featuring four courses with beer pairings for $40 per person. (Allen Eyestone/The Palm Beach Post)

SUDS SCENE: FOUR BEER DINNERS IN 10 DAYS

The Beer Guy has been lucky enough to attend a number of beer and food pairing dinners in the past couple of months along with other special craft beer-related events. Here’s a heads-up on a few coming attractions with hopes I’ll see you there.

Beer events on tap: Read the full story

Tequesta Brewing Co. brewmaster and owner Matt Webster started homebrewing at the age of 21. He has been brewing professionally for the past three years. He keeps siz to seven beers on tap at all times. (Bill Ingram/The Palm Beach Post)

Just four months ago, Matt Webster officially joined the rising tide of this country’s craft beer movement by opening the Tequesta Brewing Co.

He’s been up to his elbows in barley, hops, and thirsty customers ever since.

But of course, I know it didn’t just happen overnight. As a former home-brewer and home-brew supply store owner, I’ve seen many excited young brewers with dreams of ditching their day jobs and opening a brewery of their own, and only a select few who actually did. So with beer in hand, I recently sat down with Matt to learn more about his journey to making “really kick-ass beer” for a living.

Q: When did you first get interested in brewing beer?

A: I lived in Denver, Colorado, one of the beer meccas. My brother home-brewed, so that got me interested. There were a lot of people up there doing it, so it was easy to gain the knowledge you needed, and help and information were readily available.

So at some point you decided to pack up and move to Florida?

I moved down here for work in November of 2000, had a successful venture and when that was over, I kind of kicked around for a couple years, fishing and golfing. Brewing was something I always wanted to try my hand at professionally and the opportunity arose next door with Jim and Lisa Hill at the Corner Café. We put a small 1.5 bbl (barrel) system in the back and put our foot in the market to see if there was enough demand to do what we really wanted to do.

When did you know it was going to work?

It came about six months after we were open at Corner Café. We were getting outpaced on that small system pretty fast. I was brewing five times a week at least and barely keeping up with the regular beers, not to mention having special beers and seasonals on tap. So we knew there was quite a demand for it and that became the question, “what’s the next step? Do we stay where we are and put in a larger system, or come next door where the space had become available?”

Talk about taking an empty space and turning into the brewery of your dreams.

The landlord gutted it to bare bones and we went from there. Most breweries you’ll see the tanks are behind glass, but we left the brewery open here so you can feel more a part of it, touch it, see it, smell it. It just makes you feel more in touch with it.

This particular space, you walk in the door and it’s got a real narrow feeling to it. It reminds me of a Chicago, New York or Boston area brownstone, where you walk by the front and it looks unassuming, but when you walk in the door and see the bar, it’s kind of a wow factor. You look back and see the shiny tanks and stainless steel and kind of get blown away by how it looks in here.

The bar is a unique addition to the place.

This is my friend, Fran’s grandfather’s bar. The bar was built in 1915 in Mount Carmel, Pa. His grandfather purchased it in 1944 for $1,000. There are a lot of nicks and gouges and grooves, and the finish is chipped from the cigarettes from those days, but we just decided to leave it that way for the character. There are a 100 stories in this bar and that’s why we wanted to leave it like that.

How about the system you use to brew on?

It’s a 15-barrel DME system, steam fired so we can do decoction mashing on it to make the traditional German lager style. We have four 15-barrel fermenters, one 30-barrel fermenter. So in one batch we can make about 70 kegs of beer.

You had a huge grand opening party not too long ago, which was packed. Have you been pleased with business so far?

Business has been great. It has been pleasantly overwhelming. On opening night, we poured 1,800 pints in 10 hours . It was a mass of people. We still get a good Thursday through Saturday night crowd.

You’re also selling kegs now and distributing them across the area in how many places?

Right now we’ve pushed into Broward and Dade counties, so I’d say we’re probably on tap in 35 places. And we’ll be rolling out to 10 more places to the north, so we’re hoping to steadily grow as we get more supply. We’re brewing two to three days a week now and it’s kind of a dance with the tanks, moving the beer from one to the other and as soon as one tank is empty it gets filled up the next day.

Let’s talk about the beer. You brought several over from the Corner Café. Which are your favorites or are they all your babies?

They’re all kind of my babies. There’s always one you may nurture a little bit more. Our two flagship beers are Der Chancellor, which is a German Kolsch, and Gnarly Barley, which is our American Pale Ale. I love ‘em all but I’m most proud of the Kolsch because it’s one of the more difficult styles to make. There’s such a delicate flavor in it. Any kind of mistake will shine through that beer like there’s no tomorrow so that’s the one I’m most proud of.

And you’ve been doing some experimenting too?

We have a Saison, which has chamomile flowers, lemongrass, cut lemon peel, grains of paradise … it’s like summer in a glass, real refreshing, spicy, earthy flavors in there. We’ve got a German bock with Tupelo honey from Weeki Wachee . Tupelo honey has a little more spice to it, so it goes well with the German hops, which have some spiciness too. The beer is 8 percent alcohol but doesn’t taste like it. We also have a Double IPA coming out for American Craft Beer Week, a big bold, in-your-face beer and the hops abound in this one.

I take it you’d welcome more breweries in the area?

Absolutely. If they were down the street and making good beer, all it does is give more people a reason to come up here and drink good beer. Business begets business. Good beer begets good beer and that’s how we build a marketplace. If you look at areas like Portland, or Seattle, San Diego, Denver, you can stand on the corner, throw a stone and hit three or four breweries and they can’t even keep up with the demand they’ve got going. I think we can start that and get it going here.

The Tequesta Brewing Company is open Tuesday through Sunday from noon to 11 p.m. Tapas from the Corner Café next door are available for order in the tasting room.p>

Dan Oliver is a member of the Palm Beach Draughtsmen homebrewing club. He can be contacted at doliver@pbpost.com.