vandergrift
vandergrift: beer
Local and craft brew enthusiast Chris Vandergrift gets tipsy promoting Lexington’s growing beer scene
Even though he may be a connoisseur of fine craft beer from microbreweries across the world and a champion of locally crafted beers, Chris Vandergrift is not a beer snob, and he wouldn’t turn away any beer if you were offering him a cold one.
“Free beer is the best beer,” he maintains.
But, if he had his druthers, he would prefer a freshly poured Belgian ale, particularly something from the strong dark category.
Vandergrift has been a beer aficionado his whole life, at least his whole legal-drinking-age life. But that fondness for a cold, frothy mug or stein (or snifter, if you happen to find yourself sipping on a Belgian strong dark ale) goes far beyond merely seeking out new craft brews to taste. For the past five years, Vandergrift has been helping to acclimate and introduce other Lexingtonians’ palates to a wider array of pilsners, IPAs, bitters, lagers, porters, bocks and stouts, and anything else brewed and fermented with hops and yeasts, by putting on a series of beer-centric events, such as the Fest of Ales and Lexington Craft Beer Week, which had its debut earlier this year to much fanfare.
Vandergrift, 33, is an engineer with Schneider Electric, so it is only natural for him to have a inclination for craft beer – for an as-yet-determined reason, it seems that engineers have a proclivity for good beer. When he was first old enough to drink as a student at the University of Kentucky, he became associated with a group of friends who were involved with B.O.C.K. (Brewers of Central Kentucky, an active club of fervent home brewers), who first got him interested in craft beers.
They also helped Vandergrift understand the basic chemistry behind the process of brewing, and the engineer in him became very interested in beer.
“The science side of me really grasped on to the concept behind it,” he said. “It all made sense, the whole brewing process and all the chemical reactions. It grabbed me and I was hooked.”
Vandergrift, through the years, became more involved in B.O.C.K, eventually serving as the organization’s vice president and president (some of his beer recipes have even gone on to find their way into some of Lexington’s new breweries). His job required him to travel to different parts of the country quite a bit of the time, and when he was in other cities, fliers and posters for beer-related events would catch his eye – speciality tastings, food and beer pairings, even festivals, which would allow participants to sample a number of beers from different breweries in one setting – sort of like a B.O.C.K meeting, where members would bring in first-rate beers for other members to taste.
Vandergrift thought the model would go over well in Lexington, since it seemed more and more people were beginning to acquire a taste for beverages other than mass market beers, which continues to be evidenced with the proliferation of local breweries and bars putting an emphasis on craft beers.
In 2009 he partnered with the Downtown Lexington Corporation to produce the Lexington Fest of Ales in downtown’s Cheapside Park (the year before, Vandergrift produced a similar festival at Red Mile race track).
“Coming from a group of people who really enjoyed sitting and tasting a bunch of different things in small amounts, we said, ‘Why don’t we help other people to get interested in beer. It’s an easy way to try a bunch of different things without spending too much money,” Vandergrift said. “And that’s how it started.”
This summer’s Fest of Ales (held on Aug. 30) will be the fifth that Vandergrift and the DLC have produced, and each year, save for the first, the festival has sold out of its allotted 1,500 pre-sale tickets. The concept behind the event hasn’t changed much – hundreds of beers from dozens of breweries are available to taste – but Vandergrift continues to find new ways to make the event a little more special for participants, including bringing in a handful of really rare kegs that most people would never have the opportunity to taste in Lexington and asking brewers from local breweries to unveil a special batch of brew for the festival.
Each year, as he gains more rapport with the local alcohol distributors, Vandergrift says he has more control over the varieties of beer he can offer at the festival. And the organization becomes more manageable.
“Fortunately, the festival gets a little easier each year, but just a little,” he said. “There’s always something new that throws a wrench in it. I’m usually a nervous, stressed out wreck when it gets to be the day of, and the day after I’ll want to drink.”
Earlier this year Vandergrift and a like-minded colleague Matt Arrington (who is also Vandergrift’s partner with the website LexBeerScene.com, which highlights daily beer happenings at local bars and breweries and hosts bloggers) hosted the first Lexington Craft Beer Week in May, a weeklong, multi-venue celebration of all things beer.
Instead of being integral to the event’s proceedings, Vandergrift was more on the logistics side, coordinating involvement with bar owners and brewers, handling the marketing, and making sure not too many events overlapped with each other; he let each venue – there were over a dozen – decide their own special programming throughout the week.
The festivities were a surprising success. Vandergrift recalls one telling moment when he went to Country Boy Brewing early in the morning on a Saturday as the brewery was serving coffee-bean-infused beers all day for Craft Beer Week.
“I walked over and there were 60 people in the bar at 9 or 9:30 in the morning – all drinking beer,” he said. “I was like, this thing really did pick up. This is really cool.”
Many of the participating bars reported record numbers throughout the week. Greg Leimer, an owner of craft beer bar Lexington Beerworks, which hosted several events during Craft Beer Week, said the festivities were a boon to the venues, as well as the city as a whole since a lot of people came into town for the celebration.
Leimer says it takes somebody willing to give their time and efforts, like Vandergrift, to see these beer-centric events through to completion.
“He’s the guy that pulls us all together. We know other brewers, but it would take us forever to all get together and sit down and design something like Craft Beer Week,” he said.
But when it comes trying to find a way to make a living promoting local and craft beer, Vandergrift says he’d rather stick with the profession that first got him interested in good beer.
“I don’t know, I kind of like the engineering. Beer is for fun,” he said. “It’s one of those things where if it became a fulltime job, I’m not sure if it would be as fun as it is any more.”
Lexington Fest of Ales 2013
5:30 - 8:30 p.m. Aug. 30
Cheapside Park
A limited number of 1,500 tickets will be available for pre-sale only beginning Aug. 1
at all Liquor Barn locations, Pazzo’s, The Beer Trappe and all Central Bank Thursday Night Lives prior to the event. Tickets are $25 and provide participants with 20 beer samples and a collectible tasting glass (additional samples may be purchased at the event). About 75 different breweries will participate. The Fest of Ales traditionally sells out, so buying tickets early is encouraged if planning to attend.