The 2017 Epcot Food and Wine Festival is just around the corner, and we know that you’re just as excited about that as we are!

This year, the festival promises to be bigger and better than ever before. The event runs for 75 straight days — from August 31 until November 13.

But it will also boast more booths than ever before. Get ready to sample your way around 35 different marketplace booths, which mark 35 great years since Epcot first opened. See the full list of booths and MENUS here!

One of our favorite ways to look forward to the festival is actually to take a look back at the events from last year, and some of the best events are the low cost culinary demonstrations and beverage seminars. Join us as we head into Festival Center and take in a Beverage Seminar, featuring Shipyard Brewing!

Epcot Food and Wine Festival Beverage Seminar Featuring Shipyard Brewing

Beverage Seminars took place daily at Festival Center. We arrived for our seminar in plenty of time to be seated. It’s important to note you don’t want to show up at the last minute for your seminar; if you do, you may lose your seat, since the Information Desk will actually sell empty seats to guests looking for last minute tickets. Arrive 15-30 minutes early, just to be safe.

Beverage Seminars are just that — seminars about beverages. Ha! But seriously, they run the gamut. You can learn about a myriad of wine, spirits, and beer. Presenters are normally representatives of distributing companies, or often experts from the distilleries or wineries themselves.

We were attending our seminar in the fall, and Shipyard brought not one, but THREE fun beer options that were perfect for the season.

They included, from left to right, Blood Orange, Little Horror of Hops, and one of Shipyard’s most popular beers, Pumpkinhead.

My place setting included small pours of each beer (around four ounces), plus a water cup.

Each place setting also included a form for taking notes about the various beers.

We began with the Blood Orange, a fruit beer brewed in the Belgian style with flavors of orange peel and coriander. I couldn’t really tell much about the pour and the head, since the beer is pre-poured, but overall, I found it to be a decent, refreshing, light-style beer. It’s a good choice for consuming in the Florida heat (which, unfortunately, extended well into October last year.)

The next sample in our flight was Little Horror of Hops. Cute, eh? This is an IPA style, so we expected it to be hoppy with that characteristic citrusy-grapefruit flavor that you usually get with an IPA. What we didn’t expect was the super cool peppery flavors as well.

Finally, we tried the Pumpkinhead. If you’ve been in a store — any store — from August on, then you’ve probably seen a display of this one. People are crazy for pumpkin beer, and this is a decent representation of the genre’s fresh flavor. It’s a wheat ale with just a touch of spice.

My beverage seminar certainly inspired me to get out and try all of the season’s freshest flavors! It’s always exciting to discover a few new favorites. 🙂

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Who’s ready for a beer or three now? Leave a comment and let us know if you’re looking forward to attending a beverage seminar at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival this year!