Frost Fest To Host 25 Regional Breweries

Courtesy Photo Included with the price of admission, Frost Fest attendees receive a commemorative 5 ounce drinking glass to sample the variety of beers at the festival.

Every season in Fayetteville is beer festival season now.

Making its debut as the first winter beer fest in Northwest Arkansas, Fossil Cove’s Frost Fest will host 25 breweries both locally and regionally along with live music, local vendors and food trucks.

“There’s not a lot going on in the middle of February, and we decided we wanted to do a beer festival and expose people to some breweries they’ve never tried or experienced,” said Danielle Dotson, Fossil Cove’s social media manager. “We have the land where we’re going to build the new brewery and it’s a prime location to do a small scale festival.”

The new beer sampling fest will last from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 6 — the day before the Super Bowl — underneath a 40 by 80 foot tent on the acre lot where the future site of the new Fossil Cove Brewery will be. There will be a limited heat source and tent walls can be implemented if the weather is uncooperative, Dotson said.

Just a stone’s throw away from where Fossil Cove is now, the fest will be at 603 W. Ash Street. Attendees are encouraged to park along Ash, using the bike trails or hitching a ride.

Tickets are $30 until Jan. 29 at the brewery or fossilcovebrewing.com, and will rise to $35 from Jan. 30 to at the door. The price of admission gets you a commemorative 6 ounce glass for unlimited 2 ounce sample pours — as mandated by the state of Arkansas — from 25 breweries who are bringing as many as 100 or more styles of brews. Fossil Cove is also giving away tickets through Instagram (@fossilcovebrew) and two tickets to the winning teams at their taproom trivia Wednesday nights at 7 p.m.

Live music will be featured throughout the festival beginning with Vintage Pistol, then National Park Radio and Adam Faucett and the Tall Grass. Each will perform about an hour set during the festival.

“We’re really excited about the music,” Dotson said. “They’re all bands we in the tasting room enjoy. We knew they’d be a good fit for the festival.”

Some of the local vendors who will be on site include Puritan Coffee, Ease Arts, Homegrown Arkansas Music Festival, Ozark Natural Foods and Beer Rings Jewelry.

There will also be live art by Sasha Rayevskiy, who will be painting a mural. Rayevskiy’s mural work can be seen on the exterior walls of Nomad’s Music Lounge in south Fayetteville.

The winter setting is an ideal time to showcase wintry craft beer such as porters, barley wines and stouts, said Andrew Blann, Fossil Cove manager.

“We liked the idea of an outdoor beer festival, the fact that it is winter and it might be a little bit cold,” Blann said. “There’s nothing wrong with that. There should be some very warming beers for the season.”

Ninety-five percent of the brewers attending are from Arkansas, Blann said. A few breweries as far as St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Kansas City and Springfield, Mo. will be there, too. A few of the breweries include Anthem Brewing Company, Earthbound beer, Lost 40 Brewing, Stone’s Throw Brewing Co., Coop Ale Works as well as most all of the Northwest Arkansas favorites.

Another perk to the festival will be the direct access attendees will have to talk with the brewers themselves who will be there, most likely doing your pours, Blann said. So, if you’re curious about the brewing process or how to choose the beer you want, the opportunities are abound.

A portion of the proceeds from Frost Fest will go to benefit Apple Seeds, an organization that develops food-related educational programs for children in Fayetteville.

The new addition of Frost Fest to the beer fest lineup in Northwest Arkansas is part of a growing trend in the area for the economic successes of the craft beer scene here. Frost Fest is about celebrating and promoting that scene, Dotson said.

“The whole craft beer scene in this pocket of the state and in Little Rock, this whole side of Arkansas, has really blown up in the past five years,” she said. “We want to make this a beer fest destination area.”