Chili, beer and live music – just three of the many wonderful things The River Valley Craft Beer Fest and Chili Cook-Off brought to downtown Portsmouth.
Whether you were there for the delicious chili or for the hard-to-find craft beers, this event was fun-filled and a unique experience for our community. Over the years, Burnside Brankamp Law hosted previous Chili Cook-Off’s and this year, we wanted to step our game up and make this our greatest Chili Cook-Off yet!
Burnside Brankamp Law decided to join forces with The Party Connection and combine their Craft Beer Fest with our Chili Cook-Off to make a truly remarkable event. We did not stop there though! We wanted to make our Chili Cook-Off an ICS (International Chili Society) sanctioned event – meaning the winner will qualify for the World Championship! We worked hard making this an ICS sanctioned event, but the hard-work paid off as several cooks participated and competed for the opportunity to go on to the World Championship!
On a cold Saturday morning of October 19th, several cooks showed up first thing to prepare cooking their delicious pots of chili. Through all the hard work and dedication, the cooks put into preparing their chili – it all tasted incredible; the quality of the chili was simply impressive.
Of the two categories, we had one chili-head that traveled all the way from Cleveland. Carl Stawicki came in first place for both the Homestyle Chili and the Red Chili categories. His dedication was unprecedented, but Carl prevailed and we wish him luck on his road to glory!
While the chili turned out to be a hit with many, the craft beer side featured several breweries and even a couple of our local breweries. 7 Pour 0 and The Portsmouth Brewing Company were there and sampling their beer to public with the, “Big Dogs” such as Rhinegeist, Brew Dog and North High.
Burnside Brankamp Law would like to thank The Party Connection and SOMC for making this a memorable event for us. We would also like to thank Friends of Portsmouth as they were instrumental in ensuring this event ran smoothly and for providing us with amazing volunteers. All proceeds will benefit Friends of Portsmouth and will go toward this year’s Winterfest – another community event we are very much looking forward to and one that will bring us all together once again!
Overall, we are very satisfied with how this event turned out. We would like to extend a special thank you to all of you that attended our event, without you, none of this would have been possible.