The NJ Beer & Food Festival at Crystal Springs Resort returns June 20 to Hamburg with 200+ brews, a seafood boil, suckling pig, live music, and axe throwing—because apparently we can’t do anything halfway here.
Let’s be real: New Jersey does not have an inferiority complex about its food scene. Not anymore. And if there was ever a single afternoon designed to prove that point with extreme prejudice, it’s the NJ Beer & Food Festival—a sprawling, all-inclusive set against the backdrop of the Hamburg hills on Saturday, June 20. Come at 2 pm. Leave at 6 pm. Do not make plans for the evening.
The premise is almost cartoonishly generous: one admission price, unlimited tastings from a lineup of over 200 beers, ciders, hard seltzers, and ready-to-drink craft cocktails, plus an all-you-can-eat spread that reads like the fever dream of someone who just got back from a road trip through four different states. We’re talking New England seafood boil, rotisserie chicken, suckling pig roast, smoked sausages, and beef churrasco BBQ. On a Saturday. In Sussex County. You’re welcome, New Jersey.
The beer program is where things get serious. Yes, the big national names will be there—the kind your cousin already has a fridge magnet for. But the real draw is the local NJ brewery contingent, a rotating cast of the state’s best small producers who’ve quietly built a craft scene that can hold its own against Brooklyn, Philly, or any other city that thinks it discovered hops. If you’ve been sleeping on Jersey craft beer, this is your intervention. Two hundred pours in four hours is the curriculum; graduation is optional.
After Party Band, Axe Throwing, and—Yes—Goat Races
Between pours, the After Party Band provides the kind of live music that makes you forget you have a drive home to think about. They play the stuff you actually want to hear at an outdoor festival—loud, familiar, and loose—which fits the vibe here perfectly. The Festival Field isn’t a velvet-rope situation. It’s lawn chairs, sunshine, and the kind of afternoon where strangers end up sharing a table and splitting a plate of churrasco.
The activity lineup borders on the genuinely unhinged, in the best possible Jersey tradition. Axe throwing, laser clay shooting, giant beer pong, hoppy-hop races, and lawn games make up the supporting cast. But nothing—nothing—tops the goat races, a detail that appears in the official programming without irony or further elaboration, and honestly doesn’t need any. If you need someone to explain why goat races belong at a beer festival in New Jersey, we cannot help you.
VIP ticket holders get the added advantage of early access starting at 1 pm, a full hour before the gates open to the general public. That’s sixty extra minutes with the full buffet and tap list before the festival hits its full stride—smart for anyone who wants first crack at the seafood boil before the crowd finds the pan.
The NJ Beer & Food Festival is held at Crystal Springs Resort’s Festival Field—an outdoor venue that actually earns the word “field,” set in the kind of North Jersey landscape that always surprises people who think Sussex County is just a stop on the way to PA or Upstate. It’s big, it’s open, and it fits the energy of an event that isn’t trying to be curated. It’s just trying to be fun. And from where we’re standing, it’s very, very good at that.
Tickets are on sale now. Get them before the goat racing crowd figures it out.
Michael is the Editor-in-Chief of New Jersey Digest and Creative Director at X Factor Media. A Bergen County native, he discovered his passion for storytelling while studying at Montclair State University. In addition to his work in journalism and media, Michael is an avid fiction writer. Outside the office, he enjoys kayaking, a bold glass of Nebbiolo, and the fine art of over-editing.