Craft Beers to Flow at Jing-A's 8x8 Collab Beer Fest, Nov 3-4

Have you recovered from all the beer-heavy Halloween parties? Despite that recent spike in beer-y celebration, the Beijing brew scene has seemed a bit barren this year, with fewer beer festivals sloppily marked down in our calendars. But just as we began to lose hope for one last 2017 hurrah, Jing-A swoops in with its 8x8 Beer Fest to spoil you rotten at UCCA this weekend (Nov 3-4), with a whopping 136 different beers racked up to serve throughout the event.

The Commons Brewery's esteemed Urban Farmhouse

Announced back in April, Jing-A’s 8x8 Brewing Project invited the first lot of eight breweries from greater China to pair with eight breweries from a chosen region (a different region around the world each year) to collaborate and make some delectable drinks. This year's inaugural offerings are as follows:

• Cloudburst Brewing (Seattle) x Bubble Lab (Wuhan)
  

• Gigantic Brewing Co. (Portland) x Moonzen Brewery (Hong Kong)
  

• Breakside Brewery (Portland) x NBeer (Chengdu/Beijing)
  

• 10 Barrel Brewing Co. (Bend) x Fat Fat Beer Horse (Xiamen)
  

• Culmination Brewing (Portland) x Master Gao (Nanjing)
  

• The Commons Brewery (Portland) x Taihu Brewing (Taipei)
  

• Holy Mountain Brewing (Seattle) x Jing-A Brewing Co. (Beijing)
  

• Parallel 49 Brewing (Vancouver) x TAPS (Shenzhen/Chongqing)
  

The Jing-A clan visiting Culmination Brewing

The two-day beer fest will contain two sessions per day, with each session serving 40 beers (32 rotating beers plus eight collaboration brews). The sessions are three hours long a piece – plenty of time to sample whatever you're interested in. The organizers have put careful consideration into selecting a well-rounded mix of styles for each individual session so as to make sure that – regardless of whether you are a fan of funky fruited sours, IPAs, Pilsners, or stouts – you will have a good time.

Beer geeks may also notice that there are a lot of suddy rock stars on the list: Breakside just won more medals at the Great American Beer Festival for their beers than any other brewer at this year's competition (two of which will be at 8x8), while Holy Mountain’s signature sours always sell out in the blink of an eye (the Cloudburst and Gigantic that are either a Ratebeer 99 or 100 in the group). Other highlights include the Gigantic's Massive!, The Commons’ Urban Farmhouse Ale, Moozen's Yama Sichuan Porter, Parallel 49's Bodhisattva, Fat Fat Beer Horse's Groyster, and Cloudburst's Grande Mocha Nonfat Latte.

Brewers on the way to Beijing!

During our recent interview with Jing-A's Alex Acker, he said, “8x8 is going to be an awesome, super fun, all-you-can-drink beer festival in three-hour sessions, where you can try new China X Pacific Northwest collabs for the first time, as well as many beers that have never been seen in China before. Quite a few are even hard to get in the US. That being said, all the American breweries were really interested in joining the brewing project and coming out for this festival. That's the beauty of craft beer – people in the business are passionate about it, and there is a real sense of excitement everywhere in how the craft beer revolution is catching on in China. Also, it’s great to have the Commons because they are making some changes right now, and this may be their last collab and festival for a while!”

Taihu and Commons' collab beer

To go with the beers, there'll also be tasty food from Common Burger, Pak Pak and Susu, Palms L.A., and Jing-A's barbecue offerings. Also DJ Jay 1,2 will be on the decks both days, and you can also get temporarily tattooed by Needles & Pins.

Each session costs RMB 300, or grab a pass to all sessions for RMB 988. An all-sessions VIP pass (that means you get a T-shirt to you and me) is RMB 1,188. But that’s not all: if you attend any session of 8x8, head to Xian Bar at East Hotel and get a 20 percent discount on all the beers and food (aside from the buy-one-get-one-free happy hour), or lay an alcohol-absorbant base layer with their breakfast buffet for RMB 98. Get your ticket here: yoopay.cn/event/8x8brewingproject, or scan the QR code on the poster above.

Long live the craft beer and have fun!

Photos courtesy of Jing-A

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