In proving foresight may be vain:I was locked on for the Cider Summit, but a line-of-scrimmage audible sends me to the Portland Fruit Beer Fest. (Keenan, I owe you.) The tweets for the Fruit Beer Fest (#pfbf) are getting me all excited, so it's not the end of the world. See you there--
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Gang Agley
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I know that you shouldn't show up to a brew fest at 5pm ...but that being said this slowly turned into a "here's what we did have on tap and because we planned poorly...well um...oh here have a Burnside beer cause we aint got anything else and we already took your 25 bones and won't give it back fest"...exhibit A....two taps of the Bside Sweat Heat as of 6pm....come on man!
ReplyDeleteI had much the same experience. Out of everything, no notice of this on the way in. I feel ripped off by Burnside and the fbf.
ReplyDeleteIt was a nice try but you could tell they were overwhelmed. One of the guys running around checking kegs was definitely panicking. My word of advice would be to make the fest hours shorter or perhaps plan the taps a bit differently.
ReplyDeleteMy mistake was to arrive around 5 when all the hipster flat brim hat douches were there imbibing much too strong beer for their novice beer fest selves...definitely an odd site to see. Loved the guy spinning Tower of Power records and then backs it into a Talking Heads cut. Nice touch.
I don't fault them. Yes, they ran out of a lot of the beers earlier than anyone expected, but I think they had a far larger turn out than they expected (great weather obviously helped the turnout). It's a new festival and it's hard to estimate how many people will turn out for a brand new event. Having been slightly involved in some other festivals, I know it's huge undertaking (both financially and in time) and it's hard to estimate how much beer, glassware, etc. you need. (OBF still has a difficult time estimating glassware and keeping beers in stock after 30 years, because it's hard to do). And I hear there was a mad scramble late yesterday and this morning to get more beers for the fest today.
ReplyDeleteSo I say Kudo and Ezra and the Burnside folks for even attempting a fruit beer fest. I'm sure they've learned a lot that will help them make it better next year.
My title and Robert Burns quote are strange ironic, aren't they?
ReplyDeleteI went today, expecting a lot of things to be out, which they were. It was still a neat fest, but I think they need a bigger venue if they want to continue the fest. Of what they had left, Widmer's Gose was the one I enjoyed the most.
ReplyDeleteI would like to add that there was no way to anticipate the numbers the fest received. For example the festivals with the closest size "Cheers to Belgian Beers" and "Biketobeerfest" get about 1,500 people. Those fests are also established festivals with proven records. The PFBF in its first year, and the first festival of its kind has much less of a barometer and on Saturday alone reached: 2,600 attendees. No way that could have been predicted.
ReplyDeleteI think this was a great idea for a festival, and I can understand that the organizers weren't able to anticipate that many people showing up. But when most of the beers were gone by late afternoon on Saturday, they really should have let people know that at the door. I know that the early bird gets the worm at beer festivals, but by that point in the day there were far more beers gone than were still available.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely glitchy... yet a total blast.
ReplyDeleteShowed up at 1330 on Saturday and Just missed the Whisky ginger by what could only have been three people. However, I did get the last Arugala bacon bagel, so I felt pretty good.
Saw no glasses dropped, saw no obviously drunk folks... so, I was impressed. I also however left by 1700... as the beers were starting to close out (I tried all but one), and it was getting more and more crowded.
So, the lesson really is - show up at open, grab good brews first, don't think you'll ease into it.
most of the beers were not gone. Well over half still pouring and everyone was scrambling to find more kegs of those beers otherwise they would have all been really gone. Luckily managed to get a lot back otherwise there would have been zero beer at all.
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