This weekend is the annual Belgian Comes to Cooperstown shindig at Ommegang in upstate New York, the biggest and baddest of the Belgian beer fests in the USandA. This is such a cool festival (though, no, we’ve never gone) because you can camp out for the weekend among some of the best beers in the world and eat traditional Belgian food such as a piping hot pig roast, mussels, Belgian stew, brats, burgers and fries, and Belgian waffles. Over 150 different Belgians will be poured and this year is different, too. It’s smaller than 2006 and they sold advance tickets only to get a proper headcount and avoid the semi-disaster that was last year. (Many importers ran out of beer the first or second days because nearly 40% of people bought day-of tickets. Ooops.)

It’s normal to be extraordinarily jealous about not getting to attend these events, so in order to make ourselves even more pouty and miserable, we deliberately seek out who’s bringing what to the festival just so we know what we’re missing. Shelton Brothers is arriving with the motherload. They’re even hosting a Struise Battle of the Quads:

We’re also hoping to have a few bottles each of Struise Pannepot and Pannepøt on hand for a mano y mano battle, to the death. That will happen at 3:00, sharp. Sharp, I say!

Look for Pannepot at Bruisin’ Ales within the next few weeks!