Last weekend I went to the Long Island Real Ale Festival hosted by Blue Point Brewing Company in Patchogue, New York. Personally, this is my second time to attend the festival, but it's the third installment. I missed the premier Long Island Real Ale festival because of a snowstorm; I wrongly assumed that three feet of snow on the ground would to the cancellation of the event, but beer geeks are intrepid souls and will traverse many dangers in search of high quality real ale.

This year's real ale festival was better organized than last year's and was attended by considerably more people, despite the fact that the entry fee doubled from $20 last year to $40 (US). What that bought you was a half pint shaker glass, and six beer tickets. Essentially, you could taste about a quarter of the approximately 25 real ales offered at the festival.

While the festival was attended by a critical mass of beer geeks, the "beard and sweater"-types, there was a huge number of other people more there for good time. And by all appearances a good time was had by many. Most people behaved themselves and were polite, and the experience was an enjoyable four hours of beer tasting.

This year's event featured 25 Real Ales from nine different breweries including Long Island's craftbeer club, Brewers East End Revival. One of the club brews, a Belgian Pale Ale brewed by Shawn Bosch, was my "best of show" (although there was no official competition associated with the festival). I sampled at least eight of the beers and my pick of the festival's commercial brew would have to be the Scotch Ale from the Black Forest Brew Haus in Farmingdale, NY. My favorite commercial craftbeer of last year's festival was the Yorkshire Pub Ale from Southampton Publick House, but this year I found it disappointing (perhaps a result of palate fatigue).

At the rate the festival is growing, next year they will either have to get a bigger tent or rent out a colosseum. It's excellent to see that real ale is gaining in popularity on Long Island. Now if we could just get some cask ales in all the Island's pubs!