A new music and beer festival featuring all the Wichita breweries happens this weekend
Now that the new Wave venue at Second and St. Francis has been broken in as a concert venue, it’s time to test it out as a festival spot.
The new Prairieland Beer & Music Festival will be staged at the venue on Saturday and will last from 3 to midnight.
The beer tasting is from 3 to 6 p.m., and the event will also feature a lineup of well-known local, regional and national bands. The music starts with Wichita soul band Bad Mother Hubbard, who will be followed by Wichita-based Norteno band Mensaje Norteno. Marcus Lewis Big Band “Brass and Boujee” will follow, and headliners The Budos Band — a nine-piece horn and rhythm group from Brooklyn with a funk/jazz sound — will finish out the event.
The beer festival was put together by Wichita members of the Kansas Craft Brewer’s Guild, who have long been trying to plan a big beer festival for Wichita, something in the vein of the big Kansas Craft Brewers Expo that is such a big draw in Lawrence in the spring.
One of the event’s organizers, Central Standard Brewing co-founder Andy Boyd, said that the festival will feature 45 breweries, each of which will bring several different beers.
Among the attendees will be several craft breweries whose beer is not otherwise available locally, including Dodge City Brewing Company, Lawrence Beer Co., Blind Tiger out of Topeka and 2nd Shift Brewing out of St. Louis. The owner of Wichita’s recently closed Augustino Brewing Company also will be there pouring beer.
“Some of the breweries don’t even sell their beer here in Wichita, so it’s the only way that you could try their beer here in town,” Boyd said.
All the local craft breweries plan to be there, Boyd said, and attendees will have a chance to sample the two Wichita beers that recently brought home awards from the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. Central Standard will tap the last keg of its gold medal award-winning Pushing Trees, and Hopping Gnome will be bringing its Sepia Amber, which earned a silver medal.
Prairieland will operate like most beer festivals, where those who buy tickets get a tasting glass then are permitted to roam from booth-to-booth sampling beers.
Food trucks Flying Stove, Noble House Hawaiian, B.S. Sandwich Press and Uno Mas also will be on-site feeding the crowds.
Tickets are on sale now at www.eventbrite.com. People who want to attend just the beer festival from 3 to 6 p.m. can get $45 tickets. Those interested just in seeing Marcus Lewis Big Band and Budos Band can buy $25 tickets. A full-festival pass is $60. And a VIP festival pass, which includes early entry to the beer festival and front-row concert access, is $85.
For more information, visit prairielandfest.com.
This story was originally published October 17, 2018 at 5:46 AM.