Beer Festivals Only Get Better with Girl Scout Cookies

Pairing craft beer with Girl Scout cookies isn’t a new concept. We’ve covered the topic and so have plenty of other publications. Even small-scale Girl Scout cookie and beer pairing events don’t seem so strange: A group of people sitting around matching sweets with beer styles certainly makes for a nice conversation starter. But full-on Girl Scout cookie and beer festivals? Apparently, it’s a trend that’s been brewing for years.

Yesterday, the Indianapolis Star wrote about the city’s first Girl Scout Cookies and Beer festival scheduled to take place at Bankers Life Fieldhouse on January 24. The event, which has the blessing of the Girl Scouts of Central Indiana, will feature ten local breweries pairing their products with 2019’s batch of cookies. Girl Scouts of Central Indiana spokeswoman Deana Potterf told the Star that attendees can expect one or two pairings per beer/cookie tasting station. Examples included a choco-mint stout with Thin Mints and a cherry-accentuated sour to go with Do-si-dos. The fest, which costs $50 per person, says it has “only 700 tickets available” — which still sounds like a massive blowout by Girl Scout standards.

And yet, once this announcement led people to scratch the surface, it’s emerged that other officially-supported Girl Scout cookie beer festivals are held throughout the country — and have been for years. For instance, the Girls Scouts of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho have a page on their website for their Craft Beer & Cookie Fest where “local breweries will compete for the best craft beer and cookie pairing” at events which are “held every year in various and multiple locations.” (These events appear to take place in October.) Meanwhile, The Takeout tracked down over a half-dozen Girl Scout cookie and beer events of different shapes and sizes. Are all of them going to be 700-person blowouts like the Indianapolis one? Probably not. But they’re almost certain to be more fun than the night of drinking a Guinness while working your way through a sleeve of Thin Mints that you had planned.