2025 Southern California Homebrewers Festival Information!

Author: California Homebrewers Association January 13, 2025

The 32nd Southern California Homebrewers Festival will be held May 2nd & 3rd, 2025 at Vail Lake KOA Resort, just outside Temecula, California. A 2022 History write-up can be found here.

The Southern California Homebrewers Festival brings together more than 40 homebrew beer clubs for a weekend of tasting and education. The night of Friday May 2nd will feature a Pro Pour tasting from special commercial breweries, and a host of homebrew clubs. Saturday, May 3rd, the main event, has homebrew clubs pouring 11am – 9pm; an almost limitless selection of homebrew concoctions! Some footage from the 2016 Festival can be found here.

Bragging Rights Only Competition: This year’s style is Experimental Beer (BJCP 2021 Category 34C) with the additional guidelines of a starting gravity below 1.070 and the use of a specified local ingredient added. Rules are here.

The Boilover: During the day, we take a small break from guest speakers and bands to conduct our Grand Prize Raffle. The Boilover includes our CHA Club of the Year Trophy Ceremony!

Only California Homebrewers Association members can attend SCHF. 2025 CHA Membership and SCHF Registration is available in the Shop. There will be no Festival Admissions sold after May 1, 2024. Festival admission is a ticketless process; your legal state or federal ID is all you will need to bring. Emailed receipts are always recommended to have just in case of errors at the main gate. Your registration allows for in-and-out festival access to the during licensed event hours.

Camping/RV sites are available at Vail Lake, but fill up quickly. If you have trouble finding a site, reach out to your local homebrew club to see if they have extra space. If you are not camping at Vail Lake, Temecula has multiple hotel options. The CHA offers a free shuttle from Temecula on Saturday and Sunday. After getting an SCHF registration, please go back to the Shop to reserve a $0 shuttle pass.

The Vail Lake campground is undergoing major renovation this year and as a result camping will be limited, we are working to provide alternate places to stay (other local campgrounds, hotels in town). Check here periodically and we will share as we become aware of other options. We are planning on running additional shuttles to help with this.

Our homebrewers festival is rain or shine! Please see our Terms and Conditions for more info.

Schedule below is from last year and will be updated as bands and speakers are booked but provides a tentative schedule for events that weekend