Oktoberfest Dinner & Brew Cruise on MI Princess

Over 20 breweries and cideries will be joining for this year’s Vander Fest to be held this Saturday, October 1st at Vander Mill’s Spring Lake location at 14921 Cleveland St. This year’s lineup will include some of West Michigan and Grand Rapid’s finest beers and ciders including the likes of New Holland Brewing Co., Brewery Vivant, and Odd Side Ales. The event is scheduled to begin at 4:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. and is a rain or shine event featuring local food vendors and live music.

This year’s sold out Vander Fest featured a reconfigured layout from prior years. Gone was the “beer tent” aspect with a more open design putting added emphasis on the food and live music. In addition to the great beer and cider, the new layout benefited early attendees the most as this year’s incredible tap lineup of beer and cider saw some of Vander Mill’s longest lines as this year’s fest progressed into the evening hours. This year’s fest featured one of the most impressive tap lists yet and proved to be worthy of the longer waits. Also new this year was a tented VIP section which featured food, service, and great seats for the live music.

Vander Fest is the annual fall festival of Spring Lake’s Vander Mill Cidery bringing craft breweries and cideries together each year for an amazing evening of food, fun, and music. 2014 marked the 5th year for this event, and the continual fine-tuning from year to year has paid off with this year featuring the perfect balance of beer, food, cider and entertainment. A variety of outdoor food vendors competed this year with the Mill’s own very busy kitchen. While the cold and rain couldn’t keep fest-goers away from the outdoor tented event, inside the mill proved busier than ever with many seeking temporary shelter from the weather.

Vander Mill has stepped it up once more for this year’s annual Fall celebration Vander Fest. Warm weather cooperated with a great lineup including some of Lakeshore’s best breweries, a dozen cideries, great food options, and amazing live music complete with laser show consistent with the best of previous year’s celebrations but also offering plenty new.

In only a few short years, VanderFest has become the premiere fall festival for cider, wine, and beer connoisseurs in Southwest Michigan. Last year’s festival was so well attended leaving many food vendors running out of food. This was remedied this year an abundance of quality food offerings; Vendors included Saburba, Public, and Vander Mill regulars Standard Pizza Co. with their mobile wood fired pizza oven. Another great addition this year was What the Truck? offering a great selection of tacos, chicken and veggie bowls with a lot of kick.