At LouisvilleBeer.com: A Great Taste wrap with a brewpub focus.

This year at the Great Taste of the Midwest, I patronized the less well publicized. The epiphanies continue.

Where is Winona, anyway?

Posted by Roger Baylor in Baylor on Beer | 0 comments

Over a quarter-century of the Great Taste of the Midwest’s evolution, during which I’ve had the sheer pleasure of attending six, this legendary beer festival in Madison, Wisconsin, has evolved into one of those signature “tale of the tape” events.

Give or take five hours, a couple dozen portable johns, 140 breweries, 500 sticks of bacon, 1,000 kegs, 6,000 attendees, and you begin to get a vague impression of the scrum that awaits. Furthermore, what you’ve always heard is true: Participating brewers plunder their top-most cellar shelves, bringing rare, innovative, barrel-aged, secret-ingredient-infused beers to suit the eager completist’s zeal.

Given civilization’s steady technological advancement, it’s only a matter of time until willing beer enthusiasts can implant a microchip into their noggins, enabling an optical scanner linking directly to RateBeer’s database, permitting the collector to make the absolute best use of limited time at the Great Taste, and drink only the most highly rated, elusive, badge-of-honor styles.

I believe this would be a mistake, and here is why.