Frost Fest Outdoor Beer Festival – Fayetteville, Arkansas

Fayetteville, Arkansas is quite the destination for craft beer lovers. Between its plethora of craft breweries along the Fayetteville Ale Trail and Frost Fest Outdoor Beer Festival, it’s an Ozarkian haven for any traveler looking for the perfect craft pint. Each February, a local Fayetteville brewery, Fossil Cove Brewing Company, puts on an epic outdoor beer festival called Frost Fest. As craft beer lovers ourselves, we were happy to be the guests of Fossil Cove to visit Frost Fest Outdoor Beer Festival for ourselves!

A LITTLE ABOUT FROST FEST

⋙ WHEN IS FROST FEST? Frost Fest takes place on the first Saturday in February. Frost Fest 2020 is already in the books for February 1st. 
⋙ WHY IS IT CALLED FROST FEST? In the Ozarks the weather is very unpredictable. February can be 60+ degrees (like it was for Frost Fest this year) or it can be raining, snowing or sleeting. Because it is an outdoor beer festival, it can get quite frosty + cold. However, that’s part of the charm with Frost Fest. It’s important to know, though, that there are no refunds, you’re committing to the weather, whatever it may be. 
⋙ HOW MANY BREWERIES ARE AT FROST FEST? This changes from year to year, but 2018 welcomed 43 breweries and 2019 welcomed 45. We sampled beer from Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. I hope they continue the trend of growth! We discovered awesome breweries we had never heard of before.
⋙ IS IT JUST BEER AT FROST FEST? While this is certainly an event for beer-lovers, there is more to it. There are also a selection of food trucks, a couple of shops and there’s live music! Plus, a few of the vendors were cideries and meaderies as well. That said, I would only go if you’re a craft beer person.

FROST FEST TICKET OPTIONS

⋙ BEER ENTHUSIAST – This is the VIP ticket. With a Beer Enthusiast ticket you get earlier access. So, you’re in an entire hour before General Admission. During this hour the lines are significantly shorter so you can get to your samples with only 1-2 people ahead of you a lot of times. You also get a significantly larger tasting glass with an even more intricate design, and they’re impressively nice glasses.
⋙ GENERAL ADMISSION – General Admission tickets are a decent amount cheaper. You still get a nice, tasting glass, but it’s much, much smaller.

DO WE THINK THE BEER ENTHUSIAST TICKETS ARE WORTH THE UPCHARGE?

 
100% yes, if you can afford it. Here’s why:

⋙ NO LINES – While there are several beer enthusiast tickets, the most people we had in front of us at a booth was 4. You could quickly get your sample, enjoy and then move on to the next. (Look at those lines in the above photos!)
⋙ YOU GET TO TRY THE MORE LIMITED BEERS – There isn’t an infinite supply of beer at these events. However, if you’re part of Beer Enthusiast you have that early access to try what you want before they start running out, which happens quicker than you might expect.
⋙ SOME BREWERIES COMPLETELY RAN OUT OF BEER AN HOUR OR TWO INTO GENERAL ADMISSION – At least two breweries had to pack it up really early into the General Admission times. We were able to get to every brewery with Beer Enthusiast tickets, but other people we knew with General Admission tickets didn’t have the same luck.
⋙ THE BEER ENTHUSIAST GLASS IS SUPER NICE – I know that might seem like a silly reason, but those glasses blew me away at the quality! (You can see both glasses three photos up).

HOWEVER, if the price of the General Admission is already a bit of a stretch for you, I think you’ll still absolutely enjoy the festival. Just be sure to look up the breweries you want to try out the most first, so you don’t miss out!

OUR FROST FEST EXPERIENCE

Frost Fest was such an amazing beer festival. I’ve been to a handful and the energy here was just amazing. I loved that there were so many unique breweries and beer styles present. Although we went to 45 different booths and sampled at least one beer from each, although usually 2-3, each one had something different. The brewery representatives were all knowledgeable and very eager to tell you about their craft!

I loved this “BEERbulance” that they covered in chalk paint and then put a big box of chalk on the hood of. We had just sampled Six Mile Brewery’s Virgin IPA (in fact, that’s what’s in my glass) and had to tell the world that we loved it!

The Frost Fest mascot, which is so appropriately a yeti, became a quick friend of ours! We were also able to meet up with two of my favorite ladies who also came down from Springfield! It was really fun to get to enjoy this with friends too. Plus, we could divide and concur with samples. We would all wait in line together for a brewery’s booth, and then all get different beers so we could try all of them without having to wait in line forever.

Inside the tent they had Frost Fest swag and live music. A few bands played throughout the festival and it was a great addition. I bet years that “Frost” Fest lives up to its name, it’s a great escape. I loved scoping out the way different booths were set up and decorated. Matt and I always pay attention to really interesting marketing strategies and I think Lost Forty won our hearts. They were constantly giving out swag (thanks for our awesome reusable water bottle, guys!) and we loved the skeleton dressed in swag! There were a few times we saw him riding piggy-back through the crowds! We also convinced the brewer of 4 by 4 Brewing Co. to tell our followers on Instagram a little bit about their genius blends!

WOULD WE GO BACK TO FROST FEST?

YES! I think Fossil Cove does such a fantastic job at reaching out to such a wide variety of breweries across the middle part of the US. They’ve seen growth throughout the years and have done such a fantastic job at making a unique, fun and unforgettable beer festival! So you had better believe that we’re definitely itching to make our way back to Fayetteville again for Frost Fest!

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*Disclaimer: Although we were guests of Fossil Cove, all opinions, as always, are our own!