#SIPBeerFest and Smoked Ribs

One of the unfortunate things about this whole covid-19 pandemic is the number of local businesses that may not survive the stay-at-home orders.

Of course, shelter-in-place orders reduce the amount of foot-traffic to businesses that rely on people coming to your business.

Business is down and when you are a small local business, you often don't have the luxury of a whole lot of margin to get past a long period of reduced sales.

This is true of restaurants and similar businesses, and of course includes the small local brewery.

Here in Denver, over this past weekend, there was a "Shelter-in-Place Beer Festival" to try to help out these small breweries.

All proceeds from ticket sales, merchandise sales, and sponsorships will go to affected Colorado craft breweries staff. 

I decided to participate. I ordered 2 "tickets" and a couple of tee-shirts. I also headed over to one of my local breweries, Green Mountain Brewing Company and picked up a couple crowlers and a growler of beer. 

My participation won't save any breweries, but hopefully it helps out some.

From SIP Beer Fest:

With COVID-19 hampering our communal beer drinking we’ve had to get creative with how we get together to drink beer. 

Enter “The Shelter-in-Place (SIP) Beer Festival,” a virtual beer fest giving us a chance to drink the Colorado craft beer we love while maintaining our social distance. 

The SIP Beer Fest has two goals:

To help Colorado craft breweries boost their beer sales and

To raise money for Colorado’s craft brewing industry staff. 

Here’s how it works: 

Purchase a $5 “ticket” (this is your donation to CO brewery workers!)

Order a healthy supply of your favorite Colorado craft beers. If you order through our official beer delivery and taproom pickup sponsor Handoff  they’ll be donating $1 for every order. 

From noon to 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 11, post responsible drinking pictures or videos using the hashtag #SIPBeerFest on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

All proceeds from ticket sales, merchandise sales, and sponsorships will go to affected Colorado craft breweries staff. 

As luck would have it, Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day for a "Beer Fest".

So .. The Beer Model and I had a little beer fest and barbecue in our back yard.

We brought out the corn-hole boards. 

We set up our bluetooth speaker on Pandora. 

I also got my Weber Kettle out and smoked some ribs. 

So .... we got started around noon.

For the most part it was a pretty laid-back day.

I was really pleased with how the ribs progressed.

I won all my matches of corn-hole.

We even got the kids to spend some time with us.

It was pretty much a perfect day considering we had to stay at home the whole time.

And ... honestly ... I think this is the best I've ever done on making ribs.

And ... I don't know how much the SIP Beer Fest did to actually help out any local breweries or brewery workers. I suppose every little bit helps.

I really hope things get back to normal soon and all the local businesses are able to survive and trive once we get on the other side of the covid curve.

Take care and be healthy.