Brooklyn Beer and Barbecue Festival Sells Out - Time To Get Creative

The Brooklyn Pigfest was held this past Saturday in Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, right near the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s a celebration of swine and beer, unmatched in its simplicity and deliciousness.

Great barbecue and great beer together again, as the good Lord intended.

I’m not sure if heaven exists, and I don’t know if I’ll eventually end up there even if it does. But for the record – and God, if you’re reading this blog – my idea of heaven would be a lot like the description of the Brooklyn Pigfest, except instead of only lasting for 5 hours it would last for all of eternity, and I wouldn’t gain any weight from all the food and beer.

I only learned of the Pigfest’s existence a day or two before the event. Tickets were 85 bucks a pop, so clearly this wasn’t a no-brainer. Although in retrospect, a full afternoon of all-you-can-eat barbecued pig and cow, along with a nice variety of delicious beer from Brooklyn Brewery – also all-you-can-consume – is probably well worth that price of admission.

The website warned that the event could sell out. But with thunderstorms in the forecast, and the $85 price tag planted firmly in my brain, I just didn’t take that warning very seriously.

Let me skip to the chase. It was sold out by the time I decided to go.

I was crushed.

It felt like an anvil to the crotch, mixed with a ball peen hammer to the forehead – know what I mean?

But my friend Greg and I had already psyched ourselves up to the point where we NEEDED to have beer and meat during the afternoon. So we decided to have our own Brooklyn Pigfest.

We made like MacGyver and fashioned an afternoon of drinking and eating out of nothing more than our will to survive, a rubber band, a battery, a handful of sawdust, and some chewing gum. Oh, and our love of beer.

At the heart of it, we just needed an excuse to drink beer during the day. And even though we didn’t make it to the official Brooklyn Pigfest, we did achieve our ultimate goal.

We thoroughly enjoyed numerous great beers and some good food at a couple of high-quality local establishments: Pete’s Waterfront Ale House in Cobble Hill, and another place in Cobble Hill, the name of which escapes me - as is so often the case towards the end of any beer-fueled adventure.

A few choice beers sampled during our most recent excursion:

Captain Lawrence Liquid Gold
Brooklyn East India Pale Ale (EIPA)
Sly Fox Quad Ichor (sickly sweet, and strong as hell)

And many more.

And the final cost of the do-it-ourselves-two-man-beer-and-meat festival was quite a bit less than $85 per person.

I hope to make this more regular than once a year, because that's just not often enough. Sorry Brooklyn Pigfest, but looks like you're not the only beer and meat festival in town.

We'll call ours "Men, Meat, and Malt."