Macon Beer Festival will offer more than 50 beers

More than 50 beers will be up for tasting when the Macon Beer Festival returns Saturday to downtown Macon.

In its sixth year, the event is anchored at Third and Poplar streets and organizers are expecting 25 breweries.

“Participants can go to the different tents and of each beer they can sample a four-ounce tasting. If they like it, they can get back in line and try it again,” said Steve Bell, who founded and organizes the event. “It’s basically unlimited tastings until that beer runs out.”

VIP ticket holders will have access to some special cask beers and the indoors.

“The VIP venue is the new Piedmont Brew Pub, so they basically get a little hard-hat look at what’s to come,” Bell said. “We have food for them, bathrooms are there and it’s air conditioned.”

The event is put on by Rotary Club of Downtown Macon and Main Street Macon and raises money for Pints for Prostates, which focuses on prostate cancer awareness and testing. Men can have their blood tested as part of the festival.

“The biggest thing for us to let people know, and jokingly and half seriously, I’ll promote the festival as a health fair disguised as a beer fest,” said Bell, who is a prostate cancer survivor. “Because the beer doesn’t affect the blood test at all and it loosens the wills of people getting tested.”

He said it often works out that a girlfriend, wife or buddy will talk a festival-goer into getting checked.

“Guys are so uneducated about this disease, and in the state of Georgia we are fourth in the nation in terms of number of cases and surpassing breast cancer,” said Bell, who was diagnosed at 42 after a routine blood test showed his prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, had doubled.

The testing is open to anyone and will be offered until supplies run out.

“We don’t restrict people from coming to get the PSA by having a ticket,” Bell said.

The festival typically sells out, and VIP tickets will be capped at 100 with regular admission capped at 1,000.

The available beer samples will include everything from lagers, pale ales and imperial pale ales to stouts, brown ales and fruit-based beers, Bell said.

“We really try to have a variety,” he said. “You really get to come out and experience some beers you probably haven’t tried before and find things you really, really like.”

He said they try to emphasize Georgia breweries and their beers, including the Macon Beer Company.

“Georgia produces some really, really good beers and we definitely keep wanting to promote the craft beers in our state,” Bell said.

This story was originally published August 18, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Macon Beer Festival will offer more than 50 beers."