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A close-up image of a flyer promoting Rocket City Brewfest 2014. (Courtesy photo)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- Printed out, the tentative beer list for the 6th Rocket City Brewfest is seven pages long. By comparison, the Constitution of the United States is just four (albeit larger) pages. The Brewfest list contains more than 320 craft brews, ciders and even meads – produced in such places as Pentaluma,Calif. (Lagunitas Brewing Company), Longmont, Colo. (Oskar Blues), Ferndale, Mich. (B. Nektar Meadery), Birmingham (Good People), Austria (Stieglbrauerei zu Salzburg) and Belgium (Oud Beersel).

But the most critical contributors are the eight Huntsville-area beer-making ventures: Below the Radar, Blue Pants, Brew Stooges, Old Black Bear, Rocket Republic, Salty Nut, Straight to Ale and Yellowhammer.

“I kind of call it the Super Bowl of beer festivals for us,” Rocket Republic Brewing Company brewer/owner Eric Crigger, 40, says. He plans on bringing RR creations including Dark Matter Belgian Dark Strong Ale, a 10 percent alcohol by volume (ABV) malty, sweeter beer with plum and raisin characters, and Pomegranate Wheat, 5.2 percent ABV and made with 100-percent all-natural flavors, to the festival.

Crigger adds, “Rocket City is our hometown brewfest and it allows the locals to pay a single price and taste as many beers as they want to taste from whoever they want without having to drive around town, seeking out various breweries and beers.”

This all adds up to Rocket City Brewfest’s biggest sampling list ever. Which very well may in turn net the festival’s best-ever attendance, which has grown from around 1,500 during its 2009 debut to somewhere in the 5,000 – 6,000 range last year, according to Brewfest marketing and promotions coordinator Carie Partain.

The 6th annual Rocket City Brewfest will be held May 9 (7 – 11 p.m.) and 10 (4 – 8 p.m.) at the Historic Huntsville Depot, address 320 Church Street. Per-day tickets are $45 at the gate, $38 via Ticketmaster (plus applicable fees) and, while supplies last, select local retailers, including Anaheim Chili, Bandito Southside, Blue Pants Brewery, Drake’s, Great Spirits, Huntsville/Madison County Convention & Visitors Bureau, Huntsville Brewery, Liquor Express, The Nook, Stem & Stein, Wagon Wheel and Wish You Were Beer.

Admission includes a commemorative sampling glass. Two-ounce beer pours are one-cent each, as state and ABC regulations do not permit “unlimited free samples.” Designated driver tickets are $10.

Rocket City Brewfest is one of the primary fundraisers for Free the Hops, an all-volunteer non-profit organization that's been instrumental in lobbying for successful updates in state laws allowing for higher ABV (critical to produce many craft-beer styles) and larger bottles (often a better fit for higher-gravity craft-beers than typical 12-ounce six-packs).

Feels like the first time

Rocket City Brewfest 2014 will boast beers from two breweries, Tuscaloosa’s Black Warrior Brewing and Florence’s Singing River Company, previously unavailable in Huntsville. Singing River’s selections include Happy Ending American Imperial/Double Stout and Handy’s Gold American Blonde Ale, while Black Warrior fashions styles such as Strawberry Blonde and Apricot Wheat. “To get a brewery that isn’t already distributed in this market is kind of big deal,” Brewfest rep Carie Partain says, noting the nature of distributor agreements.

Token meals

Besides the penny per sample exchange, all festival transactions make use of tokens, to simplify sales tax for both vendors and attendees, Partain says. One dollar will get you one token. Many of the food items sold on-site go for about five tokens, Partain says, with festival vendors including Earth Fare, Rocket City Expresso, Drake’s, Fred Bread, Schnitzel Ranch, Anaheim Chili, Lake Guntersville Ice Cream Shop, New Orleans Lunchbox and GiGi’s Cupcakes. “We encourage everyone to eat,” Partain says, “because it allows people to properly digest and properly manage drinking higher gravity beers without getting over-served in a very short amount of time.”

Suds soundtrack

This year’s Brewfest musical lineup features local groups including female-fronted blues-rockers The Soft Revenge (7:30 p.m. May 9), washboard-equipped Irish-folkies Bourbon & Shamrocks (9 p.m. May 9), indie-pop combo Dawn Osborne Band (4:30 p.m. May 10) and rock ‘n’ soul band The Dozens (6 p.m. May 10).

Homebrew you

After homebrewing was finally legalized in Alabama last year, Madison craft-beer retailer Wish You Were Beer will be hosting a homebrewing demo at their tent during brewfest. Local homebrewers will be on-hand to talk techniques, equipment and recipes, Partain says.

Expect the unexpected

Whether it’s local breweries using a randall contraption in infuse their beers with extra flavors - such as extra hops or fruit in pale ales or, as Rocket Republic does sometimes, chocolate chip notes to their luscious AstroNut Brown Ale – or harder to obtain varieties from fave breweries such as Colorado’s New Belgium’s chile-brewed Lips of Faith series, Brewfest strives to augment the perennial with some "wow." “We always ask for the unusual, the rare,” Partain says. “But unfortunately those are sometimes subject to what shows up that day.” Rocket City Brewfest will debut a Mead Tent this year. If your knowledge of mead is entirely related to knights swilling it among wenches in medieval times, Partain offers this description, “Mead is basically a base of fermented honey so you’re going to have a little thicker mouth-feel, a little bit more viscous nature to it in some cases and a little bit sweeter.” Plus, commercially-made meads boast some of most awesome names in brewing, including B. Nektar’s Black Fang, Kill All The Golfers and Necromangocon.

Asked for advice to help attendees get the most out of Brewfest, Crigger says, “Generally speaking light to darkest and low-gravity to high-gravity is how you want to go. And you just can’t taste every beer there. There’s too much to choose from so you really need to decide what you want to taste and start with a game plan.”

Funny you should mention that. Rocket City Brewfest’s Build Your Own Beer List app, kind of like an iPod playlist for beer, has received upgrades including “Your Beer Is Here!” mapping capabilities and links to brew-aficionado-centric Untappd app accounts.

Just remember to mix in some bottled water – available free at Brewfest courtesy of Earth Fare - between those beers.

More: rocketcitybrewfest.com