Is it beer that you're looking for?

A day-long craft beer festival brings to Mumbai rare, imported and homegrown beers along with food, music and conversation

Mumbai may have been the slowest among the big cities to hand out licences to brewpubs, but it has outrun the others in allowing them to hold a festival celebrating craft beers. Tapped will be the first event where about a dozen in-house brews will leave their microbreweries in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore and be available at an outside venue for a day.

The all-day festival, from noon until 10 pm, will also include rare imported beers. However, the intent behind the festival is to showcase homegrown brewers. "The idea has been a long time coming but there were restrictions. When the policy fell in place, we were able to work on it," says Rahul Mehra, co-founder of Gateway Brewing Company. "It is not about individual beer brands but what we stand for collectively." Such festivals for beer are common internationally and unlike the ones for wine, they are less about competition and more about fun. Mehra's partners in the attempt are beer importer Yeast India Company's Riday Thakur, event firm Homegrown Entertainment and caterers Little Food Company.

The garden at the Wodehouse Gymkhana in Colaba will transform into a picnic setting with a long beer bar and food counters by upcoming chefs and restaurants. While music will be a part of the offering, organisers want to create an atmosphere that will allow for conversation. There will not be a single mainstream beer on tap, boasts Thakur. In fact, the cheekily worded goal of his company is to "create a community of brewheads who are as sick of that bird on that green bottle as we are, and want real beer. Our vision is to put a good beer in everyone's hand." Yeast India imports beers including Erdinger Weissbier, Erdinger Dunkel, St Erhard, Shepherd Neame Double Stout and Fuller's London Porter.

While still nascent, the craft beer scene in Mumbai has grown vibrant this year. The Barking Deer Brewpub, the only player to start brewing last year (it is not participating in Tapped), was joined by Gateway Brewing and The White Owl recently. Doolally and Brewbot are expected to enter the local mix soon. There is enough camaraderie among them to talk to each other and share resources, says Mehra. The journey has hardly been easy as the city's microbrewing policy took several years to take shape.

The quality of beer is on a par with the best, insists Mehra. "Beer is not territory dependent. All it takes is four main ingredients." But Tapped will not be educating visitors about the science or art of mixing malt, yeast, hops and water. The demand and awareness among guzzlers is already high, says Thakur. The festival plans to host 800 people and passes have nearly sold out. Craft beer is typically free of preservatives and considered tastier than its bottled counterpart. The festival will have four breweries including Arbor Brewing Company from Bangalore, Gateway Brewing from Mumbai, and Doolally and Independence Brewing from Pune. Some of them will offer samples of unreleased beers. Brewbot, the new pub in Andheri, is yet to get microbrewing permissions but it will instead serve food such as poutine with beer cheese sauce and fried chicken at the festival.

The rejection of the mainstream will extend to the food selection too. Bhakti Mehta, founder of Little Food Co and a beer enthusiast, approached Mehra and Thakur with the idea for a festival. The two had already been toying with a plan and a name for the event so Mehta joined as food curator. Rather than picking popular restaurants, she chose various light, beer-friendly dishes and called on chefs to make them. So, in addition to signature dishes, participating food companies will create off-the-menu items. Woodside Inn will be flipping burgers on a live grill, while Eddie's Bistro will serve slow-cooked meats. Sushi, pizzas and Mexican snacks are also part of the menu. For the sweet-toothed, there are desserts including Sweetish House Mafia cookies, waffles by Waffle House and cupcakes and macarons by Le 15 patisserie.

Tapped will take place on November 2 at Wodehouse Gymkhana Garden, Colaba