The Great Eldorado BBQ, Brews and Blues Festival starts at 3 p.m. on Friday in Downtown Reno.  Organizers expect 40,000 in the Downtown area over the next two days for live music, plenty of food, and beer from 50 microbreweries.  It's a far cry from the event's early days.

"Back in the day we reached out to people in California, other people in Nevada and there was maybe a dozen breweries," said Greg Hinge, Brewmaster at Brew Brothers.  "Now we have 50 come out for this; it's quite amazing."

Brew Brothers in the Eldorado has been a part of this festival since the beginning.  It's the second brewery to be established here, after Great Basin.

"This is the first brewery in a casino, and actually over a street - we're over 4th street here now." 

These days, there are a lot more local choices when it comes to microbrews.

"They keep popping up," Hinge said.  "Every year there's more and more of them. It's hard to keep track but I do my best to visit them all.  We're kind of like a mini Portland with all the breweries we're seeing these days and they all make wonderful beer."

There are plenty of Nevada brews on tap at this years festival.

"All the breweries here are all friends," Hinge said.   "We all collaborate, we all help each other out if we need something, so it's a great community for brewers.  We always take turns cruising around, visiting the people from out of state that we don't get to see all the time, and it's always good to try out beer from other breweries to see what they're doing, to see if maybe there's something new that you aren't doing."

There's something for every taste on South Virginia Street this year.

"You only have to walk a few blocks and you can hit 50 different breweries and they have multiple varieties of beer,  two to four taps going all day long," Hinge said.  "If you like hoppy beer, it's out here, if you like light beer, it's out here, if you like wheat beers -  they're here too."

Some have brewed up special beers to debut at the festival.

"We made an extra-pale honey ale," Hinge said.  It's a lighter beer with over 120 pounds of honey in it, which should be a nice refreshing beer for this event, especially if it's going to be hot."

Festival Information: https://www.eldoradoreno.com/event/events/great-eldorado-bbq-brews-blues-festival