Maine Beer Box draws record crowds at Icelandic festival
Photo / Benjamin Moore
David Carlson of Marshall Wharf Brewing Co. pours the first beer from he Maine Beer Box, a shipping container retrofitted with 78 tap handles from 40 Maine brewers that's made a big hit at a beer festival in Iceland. It's now filled with Icelandic beer headed to a festival at Thompson's Point in Portland this summer.
The Maine Beer Box, a 40-foot refrigerated shipping container retrofitted with 78 tap handles from 40 Maine brewers that headed off to Reykjavik, Iceland, on June 3, helped draw record crowds to the largest craft beer festival in Icelandic history, its sponsors said Thursday.
More than 1,500 attendees drank beer from Maine and Icelandic breweries at the BjórFestival held at Eimskip’s waterfront headquarters in the Sundahöfn neighborhood of Reykjavik on June 24.
All beer poured for the sold-out crowd was from the Maine Beer Box, which will let Maine craft brewers expand their markets and send beer to events around the world.
“The Maine Beer Box doesn’t just transport the beer. It allows us to create a pop-up Maine experience for attendees virtually anywhere in the world,” Sean Sullivan, executive director of the Maine Brewers’ Guild, said in a statement.
Nearly 100 Mainers traveled to Reykjavik to attend BjórFestival. They took turns pouring beer with Icelandic brewers to keep up with the heavy demand at the festival. The Maine Brewers’ Guild estimated that they served the most American beer to ever be poured at a single event outside of the United States. More than 40 brewers from Maine and 10 from Iceland supplied more than 100 different beers on tap at the event.
Sullivan said Icelandic brewers have now filled the Maine Beer Box with Icelandic beer to be offered at our the Maine Brewers’ Guild’s Summer Session beer festival on July 29 in Portland.
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