First off: Belgium Comes to West Chester is scheduled for Saturday, February 6th 2010. 2:00p.m. Iron Hill Brewery and Restaurant West Chester, Pennsylvania. OK, now that the date stuff is covered, here are the goods:

It is Belgium Comes to West Chesterseason for sure now. Yeah, baby! I didn’t really hit me until yesterday when I was putting together the list of all the breweries that will be attending. It is going to be a total blowout. As of this post we have 28 brewers and over 30 beers comitted to the event! That’s even more than last year….man, my liver future hurts.

A little background for those of you who are unfamiliar with this event. Like 5 years ago we were invited to attend a little beer festival in Cooperstown, New York at the Brewery Ommegang. There fest is just a bit outside of our target market and we wouldn’t normally attend…but one of our malt suppliers at the time was right up the street. The head brewer at Ommegang was Randy Thiel who is another flatlander friend of mine, and besides i’m almost always up for a road trip. This is especially true if there is beer involved! Chris LaPerrier and I loaded up my beat up Isuzu Trooper with tents, beer, and a young woman named Becky Koval. Koval had worked for IHB for a total of about a week. If you are thinking that this is the start of a joke, you could be forgiven. It actually sounds more like a National Lampoon style vacation movie! In any case, we headed up had a total blast. We haven’t missed a session since. I believe this to be the single best beer festival in the United States. I even met my wife there!

It this point you may be asking ‘So what?’ Here’s the rub: we basically stole their idea name and all, except for the camping, and are going to host our 4th annual Belgian style beer tasting on Feb 6th. We  have a great local crew lined up, and tons of beer from our friends of afar. Harpoon, Devil’s Backbone (4 medals at the GABF this year), Cambridge Brewing Company…I am still waiting on Ithaca and Captian Lawrence to get back to me (pleasepleasepleasecome). Can’t Wait!