Get ready to gas up the car and book a motel room in the Idaho Falls area for June 6th — the date for this year’s 15th Annual Mountain Brewers’ Beer Fest at the Sandy Downs racetrack.

The Mountain Brewers’ Beer Fest is Idaho’s biggest and best beer festival of the year, as over 80 brewers from all over the US (with the mountain states and pacific northwest having the strongest representation) will bring their best beers to Idaho Falls.

It’s a great price as well. An advance purchase of $20 ($25 at the gate) will allow you to drink an unlimited amount of 3 ounce samples of whatever you want to try. That’s the way a good beer festival is run.

Yes, Idaho Falls is a weird place to have a beer festival. Keep this in mind, though — it’s the 15th straight year they have done the festival at Sandy Downs and it just keeps getting more and more popular. Last year’s festival also helped raise about $50,000 for charities.

The competition also functions as a pretty good preview for the Great American Beer Festival in the fall.

This year, proceeds will benefit Breaking Boundaries, Camp Discovery, Crime Stoppers, The Bonneville Sheriffs' Office Search and Rescue, and The Snake River Animal Shelter.

Geographically, Idaho Falls is in a good location to attract brewers from the mountain states like Wyoming and Montana. It does take forever to get there from the Treasure Valley, and that part genuinely stinks. But perhaps you can wrap a trip to the festival around a Yellowstone visit or something.

If you need to drive back to Boise, or even drive to your motel, you absolutely need to have a designated driver. So work all that stuff out and try to get to Idaho Falls on June 6.