Chesterton Town Council unanimously approves craft beer & wine festival

After a unanimous 5-0 vote this week, the Chesterton Town Council gave their approval for a beer and wine festival to be held in mid-March at the Thomas Centennial Park, located near downtown Chesterton.

The festival, named Corkscrew and Brews, will be held March 19th to loosely tie it to St. Patricks, which falls the Thursday before. Chamber President Maura Dunham expects to keep the festival small in scale, with a dozen drink vendors alongside some local food vendors, Kevin Nevers of the Chesterton Tribune reports.

This is obviously great news for the town of Chesterton, a city that has a craft brewery (Hunter’s Brewing), but is kind of sandwiched between the great brewing areas of northwest and northeast Indiana. This also follows what I think is a noticeable trend of small Indiana towns getting on board with hosting craft beer festivals. Festivals are a lot of undertaking for all parties involved, breweries included. Smaller festivals that incorporate local breweries and ensure ease of access and set up for breweries will be the most marketable moving forward to any brewery thinking about signing on for another festival.

We saw with the Whitestown Brew Fest & Home Brew Competition that Indiana’s smaller communities are teeming with folks craving craft beer. Thankfully for the residents of these small towns like Chesterton, craft beer festivals seem to be trending towards their communities more and more.