Your weekly roundup

Catching up with more news from the week in local craft beer (and beyond):

• The return of the Spokane Brewers Festival next weekend means it’s also time to start thinking about this year’s Inland Northwest Craft Beer Festival .

Forty breweries from throughout the state have been announced for the annual Washington Beer Commission-sponsored event, Sept. 22-23 at Avista Stadium.

That includes nine new names from last year: locals Little Spokane, New Boundary and V Twin, plus Blewett (Leavenworth), Dirty Bucket (Woodinville), Dru Bru (Snoqualmie Pass), Iron Horse (Ellensburg), Lumber House (Maple Valley), Pike (Seattle), Reubens (Seattle) and White Bluffs (Richland).

Advance tickets are $20 per day, which includes your first six 5-ounce samples.

• The Iron Goat crew was in Seattle this week launching their West Side distribution , and stopped by Boundary Bay to cook up a joint entry for next month’s Washington Beer Collaboration Festival .

Their passion fruit IPA – brewed with custom Skagit Valley malt, hopped with Amarillo and Simcoe and fermented with a juicy East Coast-style strain – will eventually pour in the taproom here as well as at the festival Aug. 19 in Seattle.

• Tickets for the nation’s biggest beer event, the Great American Beer Festival in Denver on Oct. 5-7, go on sale Wednesday at 9 a.m. through Ticketmaster. Cost is $85 per day, if you’re lucky enough to get in; tickets sold out last year in a little over an hour.

• Closer to home, Firestone Walker’s traveling sour beer road show is coming to town.

Barrelmeister Jeffers Richardson tours the country with his “Jeffers Drops Acid Knowledge” educational program, explaining the role of acidity in sour beers with an accompanying tasting of limited Firestone releases.

He’s stopping at Victory Sports Hall in Coeur d’Alene on Aug. 16 (call 208-930-0112 for reservations) and The Blackbird in Spokane on Aug. 17 (509-381-2473). Tickets for each are $25, and seating is limited.

By the way, Victory is almost doubling its tap count – from 50 to 90 – starting Tuesday with some rare offerings in the lineup. Look for more details on that next week.

• And finally, the end of July means it’s also time to start thinking about Oktoberfest – at least according to Sierra Nevada . Their version of a golden, malt-forward fall festbier has already arrived in stores, again in collaboration with a German brewery: this year, Brauhaus Miltenberger.