Tickets Going Fast - Get Yours for The Great Pumpkin Beer Festival This Weekend

Tickets are nearly gone for this Saturday's highly anticipated event: The 7th Annual Elysian Brewing's Great Pumpkin Beer Festival. Don't let them sell out from under you. You want to go to this.

The event spans the entire weekend (starting Saturday at 12 p.m. and going until 10 p.m. then continuing on Sunday from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.) -- but pre-sale tickets are running low for Saturday. While all the usual thrill and frills will remain --The Great Pumpkin will be tapped at 4 p.m. each day at the festival --there are going to be some new, and some might argue, better features to this year's festival. Traditionally held at the Capitol Hill Elysian Pub, instead this year's GPBF will be at Elysian's newest location in the SODO.

Last year's tapping of the Great Pumpkin. Photo by Dikla Tuchman.

Head brewer Dick Cantwell has boasted the improvements to this year's GPBF will usher in more relaxed and efficient festivities:

Compared with past years, the 2011 Great Pumpkin Beer Fest (the Granddaddy of 'em All) promises to be a two-day event in a new way. Where before we would pour the beers we still had on hand on Sunday, resulting in a mellower and more manageable second day, this year we've both made and ordered enough additional beer to ensure that we'll have just as interesting and populous a selection on Sunday as we will on Saturday. Not only that, we'll be holding back some very special beers for Sunday that won't even be available on Saturday. Here's the kicker: each of the three pumpkins we'll be tapping (two on Saturday, with another on Sunday) will be filled with a different beer! Saturday's pumpkins will be filled with The Great Pumpkin Imperial and something new--the Orange Manalishi (with the Four-Pronged Crown), a Belgian-style (should such a thing ever be brewed in Belgium) Pumpkin Quad. Sunday's pumpkin will be filled with mellow and cinnamony Dark o' the Moon. As if things weren't crazily interesting enough.

Be warned again: Tickets are almost gone so make your decision quickly and be sure to pay careful attention to the handy GPBF Survival Guide posted lovingly by the Elysian crew. Here's to the best of what the Seattle craft beer community has to offer Fall -- Cheers!