Corks & Kegs Festival serves up drinks, food and fun at casino
If you like craft beers, you will want to be at the Corks & Kegs Festival.
But, if you are not a connoisseur of craft beers, and are not even particularly moved by the likes of Michelob, Miller, Pabst or Budweiser, the Corks & Kegs Festival will still have something to draw you in.
Setting up shop for the eighth time since 2015 at the Hollywood Casino at the Meadows in North Strabane on Saturday and Sunday — the 2020 festival was called off due to the COVID-19 pandemic — the festival will have food trucks, a full entertainment menu, and opportunities to shop from one-of-a-kind retailers selling everything from beef jerky to pet portraits.
The Corks & Kegs Festival is an Observer-Reporter event. It will start Saturday at noon and continue that day to 9 p.m. Hours Sunday are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Everything will be happening on the apron of the racetrack at the casino.
“There’s something there (for you) even if you are not a beer drinker,” said Jessica Tennant, the newspaper’s event manager.
The heart of the Corks & Kegs Festival is, however, the distinctive craft beers, wines and spirits, sours, stouts and ales that will be available to sample, coming from a range of breweries, wineries and distilleries. According to Tennant, the newspaper’s event manager, the Corks & Kegs Festival is the premier wine and beer event in the Pittsburgh region.
The eating and drinking will be accompanied with a soundtrack of music throughout the festival. The entertainment schedule will start at noon Saturday with a performance by the Franchise Band, billed as Pittsburgh’s “ultimate dance band experience. Then, at 3:30 p.m., veteran Pittsburgh blues and soul singer Billy Price will be onstage. At 7 p.m., the tribute band Bon Journey will play.
On Sunday, the soul group Twan and the Party Train will kick things off at 11 a.m. At 1 p.m., Six Gun Sally, a group that tips its hat to classic and Southern rock, will perform. The day — and the festival — will wrap up with the Clintones, a tribute band that plays the Top 40 hits of the 1990s, at 3 p.m.
Also on Sunday, a classic car cruise will take place.
Food trucks will be selling a variety of fare over the festival’s two days. Vendors are set to offer wood-fired pizza, seafood, hot dogs, pastries, chicken and waffles.
The Corks & Kegs Festival will have plenty to see, hear, eat and drink, but there’s more to the festival than that, Tennant explained.
“We pull all these elements together to support our local businesses and bring people to the region,” she said.
Breweries set to attend include Bell’s, Delirium, Devil’s Backbone, Elysian, Evil Genius, Fathead’s Brewery, Flying Monkey, Hamburg Brewery, Kona, Leinenkugel, New Belgium, Oscar Blues, Rusty Rail, Sapporo, Stone, Troegs, Washington Brewery, Whitehorse Brewery and Wicked Weed.
Wine and spirits will come from Belle Bambini, Black Dog Wine Company, Burgess & Burgess Distillery, Country Hammer Moonshine, Dead Head Winery, Essiem’s Apiary, Giant Oaks Winery, J&D Cellars, MLH Distillery, Silver Mark Cellars and Wiggle Whiskey.
Among the food trucks confirmed for this year are Baires, Dirty Birds Chicken and Waffles, Embers Wood Fired Pizza, Gil’s Pit Beef, Gypsy Wagon, Hoshi, Hott Dawgz, Johnny’s Seafood Shack, Le’s Oriental, Milk + Honey, Nakama, Patti’s Pastries, PGH Halal, Remi’s Root Beer, Tambellini, The Roaming Bean, The Rustic Lemonade Co., Truckin’ Triangles, Vagabond and Wood Stoked Oven.
Admission is free, but presale sampler tickets and additional information are available on the festival’s website, corksandkegsfestival.com.