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The L.A. Vegan Beer & Food Festival, which hits West Hollywood this weekend, is bringing out over 40 craft breweries and 30 food vendors to cater to the non-carnivores. Some of the dishes and brews are being made uniquely for the fifth annual foodie fest.
The sold-out festival, which will take place outdoors right across the street from The Roxy on the Sunset Strip from 1 p.m to 6 p.m. on Saturday, is helmed by Tony Yanow of Tony's Darts Away, vegan blogger Quarry Girl and Nic Adler of The Roxy.
Yanow, who also owns Golden Road Brewing, tells LAist that there will be about 110 to 115 different type of beers ticket-holders will get to sample. One of those will be Golden Road's Almond Milk Stout, which they only make once a year for the festival. Also, some must-try brews come from Noble Ale Works from Anaheim; they will be bringing out a specialty beer called Stay All Night (the name plays on their other beers on tap—All Night Long and Stay All Day) as well as Gosebusters, a fermented German wheat beer infused with magnolia oolong. San Diego's Ballast Point will be heating things up with their Habanero Sculpin, an IPA with a spicy kick.
Alongside local craft brewers like Eagle Rock Brewery, Smog City Brewing Co. and Angel City Brewery, they've got some out-of-towners in the mix. Ones that shouldn't be missed include Oregon's Deschutes, San Diego's Pizza Port OB and Colorado's New Belgium (best known for the Fat Tire Amber Ale).
Deschutes beer sampler at their Oregon brewery (Photo by Szapucki via the Creative Commons on Flickr)
You may be wondering why beer isn't already vegan. Yanow explains that some beers have some not-so-obvious non-vegan additives. For example, in order to filter or clarify the goop out during the brewing process (through a process called fining), some brewmasters put gelatin and fish finings in their beer—and it's not always labeled.
But beer isn't the only thing calling Angelenos out to this popular festival. All of the purveyors are doling out all-vegan dishes. The Grilled Cheese Truck is going all vegan for the first time. Real Food Daily will be debuting their vegan cronut, and whipping up Tu-Nut Sliders and Caribbean Quesadillas. Chicago Vegan Foods is bringing their vegan nacho pump. (You can see it here.)
Bramble Bake Shop will be busting out vegan Twinkies. Yes, you heard us right. Three weeks ago, they posted this Instagram pic testing out the different fillings for the fluffy goodies:
This year's festival will be bringing in 2,500 people—that's more than triple the number of people (700) who attended the festival in its first year. Yanow said every year they get more food vendors and brewers. It's something he's proud of and excited about attending because "there aren’t that many fun, super things you can do where every single thing is [vegan] safe and amazing."
Eds. note: An earlier version of this article said that Stone Brewing Co. and Ninkasi would be participating in the event, but the folks at L.A. Vegan Beer & Food Festival just told LAist that they are no longer able to participate.
