Tasting Events
From adult tastings to fun and unique sampling for the entire family, plan to take part in the tasting experiences offered during the festival.
Corks & Kegs
The Corks & Kegs adult tasting experiences feature local and regional craft beer, wine and hard cider. This popular event is a happy hour like no other. Your ticket grants you entrance to unlimited sampling and light appetizers.
Enjoy live entertainment while you mingle and compare tasting notes for over 40 craft beers, wines, and hard ciders from the Midwest, many from within a 40-mile radius of the festival.
Each guest will receive a souvenir tasting glass. Purchase your tickets today! Only 100 tickets will be sold for each event!
Tickets for Friday, June 22, 6-7:30pm
Tickets for Saturday, June 23, 5-6:30pm
Elliott’s Meats Cheese Curd Brat Party
Cheese curds, beer, and brats. It’s the trifecta of flavors that screams WISCONSIN! Our friends at Elliott’s Meats invite you to their Cheese Curd Brat Party.
Grab a beer (or other beverage) from the Park Bar and head on over to the Taste of Ellsworth pavilion. Enjoy sample-size brats with our festival’s signature food as the main ingredient… that’s right, there are cheese curds IN the brats!! Now’s the time to experiment with flavors–Top ‘em off any way you like from our mile-long smorgasbord of condiments, compliments of Silver Spring Foods!
Tickets available onsite. Just $5 for 2 mini-brats and all the toppings they can hold! Beer (or the beverage of your choice) available at the Park Bar.
Craft & Curd: Paired
It’s the ultimate brewery face-off! Five local breweries battle it out for best brew and cheese curd flavor pairing. Who will win? That’s up to you–You’re the judge for this intense (and tasty) competition!
Participating breweries, and their exclusive pairing:
Barley John’s Brewing Co, New Richmond, WI –
Mango Double Pale Ale with Habanero/Pineapple Cheese Curd
Hop & Barrel Brewing Co, Hudson, WI –
Crooked Grin (west coast style IPA) with Jalapeno Cheese Curd
Pitchfork Brewing Co, Hudson, WI –
Third Stall Pale Ale with Sriracha Cheese Curd
Rush River Brewing Co, River Falls, WI –
Unforgiven Amber Ale with Tomato/Basil Cheese Curd
Swinging Bridge Brewing Co, River Falls, WI –
Peanut Butter Porter with Raspberry Cheese Curd
These flavor combinations have never been sampled before… until now! Tickets available onsite. Just $2 for each pairing (try all 5 for $10). Voting will take place online and the winning brewery’s craft and curd pairing will be announced at the festival upon tabulation of the votes.
Ice Cream Tasting
A great time for the entire family, this one-hour real dairy flavor celebration features creative combinations crafted by the innovative folks from UW-River Falls Food Sciences Department. Sample unique ice cream flavors, including Cheese Curd Ice Cream (hey, don’t knock it until you try it!). The university students behind these innovative frozen treats will be on hand to share the inspiration for their creations and offer insight into the development, production and testing phases of their manufacturing process.
This year’s flavors are:
Raspberry Jazz
Strawberry Lemonade Crunch
Scout’s Arctic Trail
Peanut Butter Fudge Swirl
S’mores
Tickets for this tasting cost $1 each and are available to purchase onsite.
Milk & Cookie Pairing
Whether you’re a kid or a kid at heart, there’s something special about milk and cookies. Just like moms and dads do at real wine pairing events, we’ve specially paired four milks with four popular freshly baked cookie flavors to allow the little ones to compare and make their own tasting notes. It will be interesting to see if the “Classic” chocolate chip cookie with whole white milk will survive the test of time, or if one of the other unique pairings, such as the Cinna-Yum… salted caramel milk perfectly paired with a Snickerdoodle, will become the new favorite!
Held in conjunction with our Farmer Meet & Greet, this is your opportunity to enjoy a milk and cookie break while shaking hands with a real farmer and learning about today’s agriculture and what it takes to put food on the tables of families across America.
This year’s Cookie & Milk flavors will be announced soon!
Tickets for this tasting cost $1 per tasting and are available for purchase onsite.
