Maryland Craft Beer Festival returns to Frederick with 200 beers

Carroll Creek Linear Park turned into a one-afternoon map of Maryland beer, with more than 50 breweries pouring more than 200 unique Maryland-brewed beers and a lineup built to reward fast decisions, not lingering indecision.

The Maryland Craft Beer Festival returned to Frederick as a concentrated look at what the state’s brewing network can do when it all shows up in one place. Presented by the Brewers Association of Maryland and Visit Frederick, the festival mixed live music, food vendors, craft vendors and a no-alcohol ticket option with four ticket tiers, including VIP, VIP+, general admission and DD. All tickets had to be bought online before entry, with no on-site box office, a setup that kept the crowd moving and gave organizers more control over the day.

That structure mattered because the festival was doing more than filling glasses. The Brewers Association of Maryland, founded in 1999, says the event is its biggest annual revenue stream, and that money directly supports the association’s work to grow, promote and protect the Maryland craft beer industry. The same mission runs through the group’s Baltimore festival in the fall, but Frederick is the bigger stage: a public showcase, a fundraiser and a pitch for Maryland beer all at once.

The lineup showed why. Familiar names such as Brewer’s Alley and Monocacy Brewing stood alongside Guinness Open Gate and a long list of smaller breweries that beer fans might not run into on an ordinary weekend. The registration list also included breweries still in planning, giving the festival a rare role as an early access point for producers not yet open to the public. For drinkers trying to make the most of a day with more than 200 samples, the smartest strategy was to treat it less like a marathon and more like a statewide tasting room.

That timing gave the event extra lift. American Craft Beer Week ran May 11-17, 2026, putting the Frederick gathering right at the front end of a national stretch built to rally support for small and independent breweries. In a District Fray preview, BAM Executive Director Kelly Dudeck called the festival “a fun and meaningful way to support Maryland’s independent breweries” and one of BAM’s biggest fundraisers of the year.

The festival’s scale is no small thing. A 2024 report put attendance at more than 3,300, a strong benchmark for a local event that has become one of Maryland beer’s most useful snapshots. In Frederick, the state’s craft scene was not just on tap. It was on display, from the breweries already household names to the ones still waiting for their first public pour.