If I Ran The Brewfest..

So, for the last day or so, I’ve been wondering what to post about next.  As July is craftbrew month (and I just love beer and brewing) I have decided to stick with the promised topic of beer festivals. So here we go:

Hmmm.. If I ran the brewfest..

When I was young, I was a huge fan of Dr. Seuss (okay, I still am in a lot of ways). There was a series of books that he wrote that was themed around “If I ran the..”.  As I recall, there was one about a circus (the Circus McGurkus if I remember correctly), and one about a zoo (that I do not remember as well). Well, I was thinking about all of the upcoming brewfests coming to Portland this month, and I began thinking about ways that I think brewfests could be improved. So, While I won’t try to duplicate the good Doctor’s style, here we go.. If I ran the Brewfest:

My brewfest would be close to home, so there would be no need to either find a designated driver or involve public transit.

My brewfest would have NO minor children admitted (although close-by daycare would probably be arranged)- in my mind a brew festival is not inherently child friendly. I think that trying to accommodate for children does a disservice to not only the adult festivalgoers, but to the children as well.

At my brewfest, all of the people pouring beer would know about the beer they were pouring, and would have had an opportunity to sample the product so they could give a personal opinion of the beer they are pouring. For that matter, anybody allowed to pour beer would be experienced and efficient.

At my brewfest there would be real flexibility in the amount of beer a festivalgoer could sample at once. Currently in Oregon, festivalgoers can purchase a four-ounce “taster”, or a full pint for four times the cost, with no other options- I’d make eight and twelve ounce pours a reality too.

At my brewfest, the physical arrangement of beers would be linear and in order by style, not alphabetically by brewery name- Light lagers at one end of the fest, stouts and porters at the other. Yes this would mean that breweries offering multiple brews would be required to set up multiple points to distribute beer, “swag”, and place signage, but I believe the benefit that a festival attendee would gain would far outweigh the extra hassles for the brewery representatives, and the festival staff.

At my brewfest food would not be priced out at premium rates. All food vendors would be required to provide a minimum of three low cost items (one dollar or less), as I believe the real reason most people end up drunk at a beer festival is that vendors seem to think that a six dollar veggie dog is reasonable, causing many festivalgoers to skip food in favor of a few extra beer samples.

At my brewfest, solicitors would not be allowed in the festival- the profits of every brewfest I can remember attending have gone to a charitable cause, I don’t think it is appropriate to hit people up for cash when they have a few beers in them and they are trying to have a good time.

At my brewfest, beers would be served in real glasses, not in flimsy plastic cups. Yes, this would be more expensive. Yes, this would be more dangerous, as broken glasses can pose a genuine safety hazard. But, I do not really care for drinking from plastic cups, and I think that most others would agree with me and drink from glass before plastic.  Additionally, glasses would be washed all day long, and a fresh clean glass would be used for each new beer sample.

At my beerfest, the chemical toilets would not be arranged in a single massive toilet complex. I would arrange smaller clusters of chemical toilets spread out at regular, predictable intervals.

So, I think that while my brewfest would be considerably more difficult to plan and stage than many of the older and established annual festivals I think that none of my proposals are really too far from the realm of what could be possible (okay, maybe the fresh glasses and close proximity to my home are a bit fanciful).  I just think that festival organizers need to think about festivalgoers less as cash cows, and more as customers who deserve the best fest that can be arranged for them.

New blog, The North American Organic Brewers Festival, and Stuff.

Hello all. For those of you who know me, welcome to the new blog. For those who don’t, A lot of background about me can be found on my wife’s blog Chronicles of me and  mine” (http://aletaandandy.wordpress.com/). I’m sure you’ll enjoy the great stuff my wife has written there about herself, me, and our wonderful cats.

So this blog has come about because this morning my wife was patiently listening to me go on about our experience at the North American Organic Beer Festival yesterday (more later).  My wife listened to my comments and thoughts for the twelve millionth time (did I mention she was pretty patient with me sometimes?) and she suggested that I start a blog, as some of my ranting is actually made up of quite logical, well reasoned thoughts. Truth be told, I have never really wanted to write a blog. I have never been a big fan of writing in general. Something about working with written language lends such a sense of permanency, I suspect that in a sense I will be judged as a person by the thoughts I inscribe on paper (or in the electronic ether, as it is in this amazing age of information). I suppose however that this is all just a manifestation of my own paranoid mindset (maybe there will be more on this in future postings). I highly doubt that anybody will judge me too harshly from what is written here.

So with that out of the way, I would like to get into some of the thoughts I had that that spurred the creation of this hot new blog, but a little background about me is pretty important before I get into the bulk of my ranting. I love beer. I mean, I really love beer. I love the way it smells, I love the way it tastes, I love the way that there are so many different styles and flavors of beer. I love how beer is so closely tied to agriculture and the development of modern human society. I love beer so much that I started to brew it myself at home several years ago. I love beer so much that I decided that brewing was what I wanted to be involved with professionally. This led to me quitting my blue-collar factory job to return to school full time as a student of microbiology so I could gain skills that would make me valuable in a brewhouse environment. I have judged a few homebrew competitions, and I am “recognized” by the Beer Judges Certification Program (although I am not ranked by this group). I love, well, just about everything that has to do with beer and brewing. As a result of this, I have been to a couple of beer festivals. okay, I have been to a lot of beer festivals. I have even been a volunteer beer server at a couple of festivals.

If you have never been to a beer festival, let me lay out the general format. firstly, everybody gets “carded” on the way into the event. People of legal drinking age are given wristbands so that beer servers can readily know who is legal to serve and who is not. Next, festival goers must be separated from their cash. A tent especially for this purpose is usually found near the entrance to the festival. In exchange for all your cash, a worker will gladly give you a plastic mug or cup of unknown size (usually about fourteen ounces or so) and a bunch of tokens or tickets (think “scrip” at the grade school carnival). These tokens and tickets can be given to other volunteers at the ends of reallllly long lines (think Disneyland on a holiday) who will give you a splash of beer in your plastic cup in return.

On the surface this sounds like a really simple, straightforward method of conducting business. The realities of a beer festival can be a little different. For starters, some beers can be quite strong and as a result, beer festival organizers (the powers that be, or T.P.T.B.) will often require a greater number of tokens to be exchanged for samples of the “higher proof” beers. Another way that beer festivals can be confusing (and most UNlike Disneyland on a holiday) is the way that lines seldom have any sort of boundary to provide definition and a sense of order. Believe me, it can be pretty frustrating to be standing in what you think is a line, but is in reality just a group of people hanging out somewhere in the middle of a line, with the line actually forking on the far side of the group, extending off into two different directions. But somehow festival organizers expect a large crowd of people who have been served intoxicants all day long to just sort of work it out themselves. Of course this sort of chaos does not develop at every beer festival. Many are very well organized and take place in areas that are well sized for the attendees, and I can say that I have never been to a beer festival where I felt that there were inadequate toilet facilities for anybody regardless of gender or special needs (ooh.. how P.C. of me).

So, you might be wondering just whyI am going on about beer festivals (or maybe you read the title of the post, and you know where this is headed). It just so happens that yesterday I had the privilege of pouring beer at the North American Organic Brewers Festival.

 

Normally I would not say it was a privilege to work a volunteer shift at a brew festival, but yesterday something pretty special happened to me at my shift. I was allowed to pour samples of The Pike Brewing Company’s “Naughty Nellie” golden artisan ale, and the “Monk’s Uncle”, a Belgian-Trippel-style ale, also by The Pike Brewing Company. Now, why I say that this was a privilege, is that the Pike Brewing Company does what very few other brewing companies do. They actually take advantage of the publicity that can be generated at brewing festivals, specifically by sending representatives of the brewery to work the booth where Pike beers are poured. The Pike Brewing Company does not typically use festival volunteers, as T.P.T.B. at Pike have no way of knowing what they are going to get in the way of a volunteer. Somehow, at this festival, T.P.T.B. at the Pike allowed volunteers to pour their beer. Needless to say, I hung on every word that Linda (the representative from the Pile Brewing Company) said. I am very pleased to report that I was able to learn the key promotional features of the beers very quickly, and I got the impression that Linda was pleased with the way I was representing the fine ales provided by the Pike. So, I had a very positive experience at my shift, even though I was VERY busy. The “Monk’s Uncle” sold like mad, even at a double token premium price (because it is a Belgian-style trippel, and at 9.4% A.B.V., T.P.T.B. at the festival deemed it to cost a double price; to slow consumption of this ‘higher proof’ ale).

The second best part of my day at the North American Brewers Festival came at about six o’clock in the evening. This was when both Aleta’s and my shifts came to an end. At the end of our shifts we were able to collect our rewards for volunteering.  Each of us were compensated with a festival cup (made from a biodegradable corn derived plastic) and thirteen beer tokens to use as we saw fit. Of course I headed straight for the Pike booth where I had been working, to try the beer I had been pouring all day. The “Monk’s Uncle” was fantastic- smooth, sort of creamy; very drinkable and well balanced. Also, it didn’t hit me with an overwhelming clove-banana-bubblegum ester overload the way some Belgian ales can (a big plus in my mind). I’d say it was the best at the fest, but Hopworks Urban Brewery had a beer there called “Seccesion” that was described as a “Dark Pale Ale” or “D.P.A.”. Very tasty stuff. It reminded me a bit of New Belgian Brewing’s “1554”, in that it was very dark in color, but without many unfermentable sugars, allowing for a light bodied beer. The similarities ended there however, as the “Seccesion” had a more intense hop profile, and fewer of the burnt, acrid flavors that can come from using dark roasted malts. 

Now that I have given enough background for everything I am about to write to make sense (and to make the undedicated move on to a new page), on to the rant that inspired the creation of this blog… 

Firstly, before the rant: It must be very hard to put a beer festival together, all the licenses, security, the logistics of keeping sixty or so taps flowing smoothly are just incredible. To do all of this with an unpaid volunteer staff makes the prospect all the more daunting. A big hand to all involved in putting those things together. For real. Thanks. I really mean it. A thousand times thank you.

 Now for my rant. I really hope nobody ends up with hurt feelings or an overwhelming hatred of your humble author and beerlover, but I really feel a powerful need to get this off my chest: I don’t know just what happened to the North American Brewers Festival this year… It did not feel quite as smooth as the festival last year. I think that the shape of the festival grounds was different from last years shape perhaps. I remember that big tree as being more central (and providing a very organic feel to the event). I heard that the festival took up the same area in square feet as last year, but things felt really crowded this year. Perhaps it was the (very smart) addition of a large, open tent to provide shade that made things feel more crowded, or perhaps it was the general shape of the fest. Something really went wrong there…

Come six thirty or so, taps started to run dry. This is to be expected, as there really can be only so much beer available to be consumed, but what I cannot for the life of me figure out is just why T.P.T.B. at the festival just shut down service stations when a particular beer ran out. But why is it the end of a station when a beer runs out? Why not simply add stations with beers that are still pouring, but cannot really be accessed by the festival goers because the few remaining beers have really long lines. It seems like you want to make money for charity by selling samples, but you don’t want to earn those charities that much money. Better to have long lines of hot, thirsty frustrated festival attendees.  

Speaking of lines.. Who laid out the floor plan for this event? Why did it seem like a good idea to run lines for beer out down the same line as the port-a-toilets?! This was not only a bit gross as a person waiting in this line, but having the beer line run in front of the doors of the port-a-toilets really cut down on people’s ability to get at and use the port-a-toilets… And what was up with the northern most beer area? Didn’t anybody notice that about fifteen feet away from the east-facing vending positions there were vendor tents? This meant that when the fest was busy nobody could really even see the signs for the beers being poured there, and that the lines could really only hold about ten or twelve folks at a time.  A little more thought to the layout of taps and vendor tents would have made for a more pleasant event for all. 

And then there was the nonsense on stage… what was it with the whole audience participation thing you were trying to do with “Captain Organic”? The whole “when I say ‘organic’ you say ‘beer’… okay.. Organic…” thing got real old real fast. If a crowd doesn’t seem to be into that  sort of call-and-answer stuff, you probably shouldn’t keep trying  to make it happen (it does not feel very organic when this sort of stuff gets pushed on a crowd).  And c’mon.. ‘Captain Organic’, puh-lease, it’ s a beer festival. The majority of the crowd was over twenty-one. I think ‘Captain Organic’ would really have been more appropriate as a substitution for a clown or magician at a four-year-old’s birthday party than as entertainment at a beer festival. Give us Bacchus or Dionysius converting to beer from wine. Or how about an appearance from the mighty Ninkasi, or a tribute to Gambrinus, perhaps. Sheesh. 

This aside the festival was great. I’ll volunteer and attend again next year for sure.

So now that I  have broken all the rules regarding the proper length of a blog post, I’ll be signing off for a day or so. In the next installment you will probably find more of my opinions about beer festivals, as well as more opinions about other stuff too. Now go drink a beer. If you read all this, you really deserve one I should think.