Northern Ontario Microbrew Festival set for Sudbury

A festival featuring Ontario craft beer, entertainment and food is set to take place in Sudbury later this month.

The Northern Ontario Microbrew Festival will take place on March 22 and 23.

The event will feature beer from 16 different breweries across Ontario, including some brews you can't get in the north.

"We travel down to Toronto ourselves to pick up kegs you can't try here in Sudbury," Ashley McCarvell, sales and events manager with Sudbury's Stack Brewing and organizer of the event said.

Attendance has been growing each year for the festival so more space in the Caruso Club has been rented out for the event.

"We tend to sell out every year for both the Friday and Saturday night events. So this year on the Saturday we've opened up the lower hall so guests can go in between both halls," she said.

"So that's opens up our capacity by about 300 people so we've added on about four new breweries."

McCarvell says the event usually sells out each year.

"It's a lot of regular customers of ours and local restaurants around town who carry our product but it's also the friends of those people and the friends of the friends now that the festival growing," she said.

"The first year we had the festival we reached about 500 people and now we're on year five and we're looking at 2,100."

And if you're not a fan of beer itself, there are options available. Products from Crosscut Distillery in Sudbury will also be available.

"Honestly, I think there's not too many things to do in Sudbury during the winter that involves indoors and drinking," she said.

"We're kind of capitalizing on that market heading into spring."