Craft Draught Showdown – July 2020

For the first time since the beginning of March I went out to dinner last night. One of my favourite restaurants in Halifax, The Carleton, started hosting Craft Draught Showdowns last year. They let their Chef go wild creating a five course meal and have two local breweries compete bringing five beers to pair with each course. It is a fun time with friends and really interesting to hear from the different brew masters about their process of brewing the beers and how they choose the pairings.
Unfortunately COVID wiped out a lot of these events over the last few months, but it was great to see how they put together the event as safely as possible. There were only 1/3 of the normal number of tables, all the staff wore masks at all times, and many patrons were also masked anytime they were up from their tables. The Chef talked about how they designed the menu to source as many of the ingredients from local farms and vendors as a way to help out the community.
In a lot of ways it was super strange being back out in public, but overall it was a lot of fun.