Last Saturday, those that attended the Treasure Chest Fest at Green Flash were treated to a truly successful and marvelous event. In its fourth year, benefiting breast cancer charities, a small beer fest has grown into a national campaign including actual festivals here and on the site of their future Virginia Beach brewery.

As this is Green Flash’s flagship rare beer event, 19 barrel aged and one off cask beers awaited us. One of the many reasons this event stands out from a typical beer fest, 11 phenomenal San Diego restaurants made pairing dishes; expertly matching the flavor strength of this brewery’s craft beer. Intermixed with the serving stations, many local vendors were present for your shopping pleasure.

As well managed as I’ve ever seen an event, I noticed several components that were improvements over last year. First, ventilation; I cannot thank Green Flash enough for the amount of giant, industrial fans moving the air around inside the brewery. It was very comfortable inside despite being a hot day. The demonstration area at the front of the brewery offered several tables to sit at and spread the serving sites out, helping with congestion in the back of the building. Water was everywhere, ice cold, delicious water. The quality and quantity of water stations is often an afterthought, but that was not the case here. Most impressive was the growth and maturity of the sour/funky/barrel program.

The 3 variations of Little Freak, the one off Treasure Chest beer and a few other beers really showed a great level of tartness without being too acidic. I found the boysenberry version of Little Freak to be most pleasing but the cherry gave it a run for its money. Hands down, the Sour Blonde was my favorite beer of the day. Crisp, clean, tart and refreshing; I found it necessary to inspect this beer 3 or 4 times for quality assurance. In discussing this remarkable beer with Mr. Silva, I was elated to hear they have long term goals to keep brewing this beer and possibly blend it into their first geuze someday.

On the food side of the event, 3 dishes stood out and should be mentioned. The lamb, whatever he called it, from Carntias Shack Shack (pictured above) was amazing and required two samples to confirm its awesomeness. Pizza Port, in a move of pure genius, served vanilla iced cream with bourbon on top. Certainly not least, Waypoint made a terrific duck confit salad.

To reiterate, this was an amazing event; the fact that we were also doing good just put the cherry on the cake. That’s an old saying, we should change it to cherry on the Old Fashioned or something. Wait, I just suggested changing an old saying to something that actually has old in the saying? I barely took any pictures because I was actually enjoying the festival and the company of my wife and friends. Thank you to Green Flash for having me, I truly enjoyed the day!