Brewtopia World Beer Festival

The Brewtopia World Beer Festival is returning to New York City for a third year, making it the city's longest running beer festival. The event is held in two four sessions, 12:30pm-4:30pm and 6:00pm-10:00pm. The $40 admission to either session grants you unlimited access to over 300 craft brewed beers from dozens of different breweries. Now, the event coordinators are quick to point out that this is no "drunkathon," rather it's an excellent opportunity to expand your tastes by sampling a variety of craft brewed beers and to speak with representatives of the breweries to learn more about their product.

But lets not kid ourselves too much. No one is swishing and spitting their beer out, and no one is serving shot glassed sized samples. The demographic of the beer connoisseur is entirely different than that of the wine connoisseur. Most notably beer connoisseur's tend to work for a living, they have at least a basic familiarity with your standard power tools, and although they can easily pick out Belgium on a map of Europe they might be a little more challenged to find Italy which is known in the beer world solely for Peroni (the Italian take on Natural Light)

Brewtopia World Beer Festival

You can buy tickets here for $60

More info at the Brewtopia Website