Here's your chance to pick the local breweries pouring at the Rochester Real Beer Expo

Want a voice in the breweries at Rochester's biggest rare beer fest? Here's your opportunity.

I’m excited — the Rochester Real Beer Expo is on the calendar again and I’m really excited to play a little part in it. And the beautiful part is that I am again encouraging the beer-drinking public to help out.

The 12th edition of the Expo takes place on Saturday, June 8, at Innovative Field, and it allows the public to pick which breweries will participate.

(Then it’s up to me as beer curator to work with and challenge the breweries to have a little fun. It’s on me to convince them to bring something weird, something barrel aged, or something so unique it’ll blow your mind. I think I’m up to the task btw. Expect there to be a clause in the contract that dicates this. I’m cool with flagships, but I always wanna see something different and I wanna see breweries do something different.)

This year’s event, which is again co-produced by the Business Association of the South Wedge Area and still serves as the group’s biggest fundraiser of the year, will feature 75 craft beverage producers (that’s the number rolling around in my head right now). That’ll be an increase of about seven producers from last year.

It’ll be a mix of local, regional, national, and potentially international (Yay, Canada!). (You know I’m gonna invite Bellwoods.)

Voting is live now and will run through Friday, January 26. Beer nerds are encouraged to pick their favorite 20 local breweries, the ones they feel would make the Expo extra special this year. And then I’ll coordinate with those breweries.

I’m gonna give myself a little flexibility this year and save a few local spots for special curator’s choice selections — the places you might’ve overlooked and I think are special enough to showcase. I’ll be extra transparent on those picks, too.

The Expo is unique, because it gives a voice to the public. It allows the public to have a platform to select the best and most interesting local breweries in this area. This year’s ballot features 70ish choices. All of the spots are within an hour or so of my office in downtown Rochester.

That means you won’t find any breweries from Erie County or central New York on this ballot. You can expect the best and brightest from both Buffalo and Syracuse. It also limits the Finger Lakes locations on the ballot. But again, you can expect my favorites to be present.

So enough of my yammering, get voting. I’m really looking forward to seeing what breweries emerge from this vote. Last year, we had about 1,200 votes. I’d love to see us blow past that this year.

Follow this link to select the 20 local breweries you wanna see pour at the 2023 edition of the Rochester Real Beer Expo: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1zWx0UfNlL5ZsMIiRvZFUjOPOxJpjt8FHsPZQI06dXvY/edit.

And to purchase your tickets, please go to https://www.ticketreturn.com/prod2new/BuyNew.asp?EventID=343454.