Taste of Tennessee Craft Brewers Festival

We had lots of fun at the inaugural festival! I would happily recommend any beer festival that Rhizome Productions organizes! Many beer festivals I’ve been too have been very disappointing — the beer ran out, over crowded, exorbitant entrance fee, unsavory crowd. This event was non of those things!
We elected to take the shuttle to the festival so that we could avoid parking and driving inebriated, safety first! The bus arrived on time but it seemed as if our driver had no idea where he was going. We went this crazy backwards way via Fesslers Lane to the fair entrance on Nolensville, which was closed. So we went around to the entrance on Bransford and Benton, which was also incorrect and the bus driver was forced to back down a straight hill to turn us around, scary! Then we finally arrived at the correct entrances on 8^th and Wedgewood, at this point I was seriously ready for some beer.
We were directed to the speedway, got checked in no problem and descended on to the track. Super cool place to have an event like this, in the middle of a dilapidated speedway! The people to brewery proportion was perfect while we were there. We never waited more than a few minutes in line to try anything and it was wasn’t crowded at all! I’m petty sure the event didn’t sell out but I’m sort of glad it didn’t, I appreciated the elbow room and the chance to move away from smokers. While we were there we never found a place that had run dry and I liked that this festival focused on just Tennessee and had a varied selection from all over the state.
The food trucks were a nice option although what we had from Bisquit Love was gross, and I liked that there was live music even though no one was paying any attention to it. We watched corn hole and milled about drinking from our neat little tasting jars. I found myself wishing there were some benches and noticed that everyone was sitting on the white wall behind the tents because there were a lack of places to sit.
We didn’t stay for the whole event, after 7 –8 tastings I was waaaaay done. We got a taxi back to the east side easily enough. Was the event worth $ 40? There’s no way I drank $ 40 worth of beer, however if I had stayed the whole time I may have. But it’s the cheapest beer festival I’ve ever been to and the most enjoyable. ALSO the ticket got you admission to the fair! We left before there were any drunk incidents amongst the festival goers, so the crowd was great fun!
I really enjoyed this event.