By Jim Galligan
I have a love/hate relationship with beer festivals. This occurred to me as I was walking into the New York City American Craft Beer Fest, my head filled with a sense of dread, my belly tingling with excitement. These are always bipolar affairs for me — it seems that there's something I hate about everything I love when it comes to beer festivals. Here are a few examples:
The crowds
The saying goes that beer people are good people, and that's generally true. I love seeing beer geeks running wild at a festival, sampling beers, making notes and comparing what they’ve tasted with their friends. I could hang out all day with these folks and their interesting facial hair.
But I hate the other element that beer festivals attract — the frat-boy types who are out to get their money's worth by drinking as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Pray they don’t figure out that the crowd goes "ooooh!" when someone drops their glass, because these geniuses will start slapping them out of the hands of strangers. I hate that — you're upsetting the gentle nerds!
The volunteers
I love the fact that people are excited enough about craft beer to volunteer their time to pour samples at a festival. They are the lifeblood of the event, and I’m all for anyone learning more about beer and sharing what they know with others. It’s what being a beer geek is all about.
Is craft beer healthier than milk?
But I hate that volunteers are pouring the beer instead of people who actually work for the brewery, because many of them don't know much about the beer. You can ask what’s in their pitcher and they'll regurgitate a memorized answer, but if you ask anything about how the beer was made, most will look at their shoes and say you'll have to talk to the brewery rep about that. Problem is most of the brewery reps are off networking with the other brewery reps, so there’s no one at the booth to answer my enlightened inquiries — I want to know how this beer was hopped NOW. Frustrating!
VIP rooms
I love the idea of the VIP room, where you need a more-expensive, limited-release ticket to get in. The VIP room is an oasis where a fancy beer geek such as myself can get a taste of hard-to-find brews without having to deal with the louts who are at the festival simply to catch a buzz. It's worth the extra dough to taste beers you’ve only read about in a more serene setting.
Mostly. I hate the VIP room because there's usually only a handful of truly rare beers for tasting and a lot of filler that belongs in the main show, not the special fancyman room. I paid extra for THAT? That's sitting on the shelf of my local beer store! C’mon, where’s the 2007 Dark Lord?!
So many choices
One of the best things about going to a beer festival is that there are many, many beers there for you to try. It’s almost an embarrassment of riches. I love this because I can cover a lot of ground as a beer geek and sample beers that I've never had before. It’s a great opportunity to find new beers I’ll love and cross some duds off of my to-try list.
I hate having all of these temptations on hand as well, because I don't want to get sloppy drunk, and trust me, those two-ounce samples add up pretty quick. Actually they’re more like three ounces (the volunteers offer generous pours), meaning you can only have about 12 samples before you’ve got three beers worth of booze on board, usually in less than an hour’s time. That’s bordering on binge drinking, which isn’t my style. So instead of going with the flow and happily drinking my way through the building, I wind up having to use planning and discipline. At a beer festival. No fun! This isn’t typical of the rest of the crowd, which starts to get stumbly and bumpy after 45 minutes or so.
Public transportation
I love that we have a robust public transport system in the New York City area, because it meant I could get to and (more importantly) from the beer festival without having to drive a vehicle. Without it, I probably would have had to pass on the festival, as I was flying solo and couldn’t line up a designated driver. It's great to have the public transportation option.
But I also hate public transportation because it's open to the...well...public. In the case of my trip into the city, this meant riding a train packed with pre-St. Patty's Day partiers bound for a day of public intoxication. They were already hootin’, hollerin’ and hammering beers on the train, and it was only 11am. You can read all about my experiences here, but it was like being trapped at a sorority kegger while having a migraine. It made me feel very, very old.
Overall, it was a fun day. I got to try some new beers and meet some new friends. I also noticed that there were many ladies at the festival who didn’t look like they had been dragged to a sports memorabilia auction — they were into it, which is a great sign of just how popular craft beer has become.
I’m looking forward to (and dreading) my next beer festival!
Jim Galligan is co-founder of the Beer and Whiskey Brothers blog, where he and his brother Don cover the ever-evolving world of craft beer and distilled spirits.
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