More than 4,500 happy Haligonians packed the Seaport Beerfest this weekend for an around-the-world-in-beer vacation that ranged from Austria to Australia.
“It was a brilliant night. We sold out Friday evening and we expect to sell out for the next two sessions,” organizer Bruce Mansour said Saturday afternoon.
The warm weekend made for a spectacular event, he added.
This year had a bigger focus on introducing women to beer and Mansour said there was a rise in female participants, though he couldn’t say by how many.
Tucked inside the pavilion was one man with a giant job. Nicol Rennie is Canada’s sole representative of the Scottish oak-aged beer Innis & Gunn. Based in Oakville, Ont., he’s been in Canada for a year and has promoted the beer in every province except Quebec.
“I just got married and I think I might be divorced pretty soon,” the Edinburgh native joked. “Last year a couple of journalists came up to me and said they’d done a survey and we were the unofficial favourite beer at the festival.”
