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| - An afternoon of beers, food, and friends in Lincoln Park ? What could go wrong ?
My first beer festival and I was a bit disappointed.
Note, this isn't a beer tasting. It's a beerfest where most people were getting drunk. You likely won't have the chance to chat with the rep. pouring the beer, there was a line of 5+ people behind you waiting for their beer.
I was in VIP [thanks brother-in-law!] which for some amount (I think he paid a discounted $60/ticket, through a groupon), offered a private VIP area with a food station, our own port-o-potties, food from BRGR9, and 2 additional beer stations (of Goose Island), a covered tent, and seats (thanks to the Lincoln Park).
Excellent food by BRGR9 ! They had the complimentary food (burgers, homemade corn dogs - the first corn dog that I've ever liked - the breading was homemade and light, salad, mac and cheese with sundried tomatoes and bacon - awesome]. Now, water for us ? A staffer told us water should be available but promised it was on the way and it came around 2-3p.
For the proletariat non-VIPs, there were 5-6 food vendors, and water for $2.
Besides the food and booze, there was a volleyball net and a handful of vendors in Lincoln Park. Next time, they should use a larger portion of the park because people were crowding around each other and near the beer lines.
Although the Scene promotes other events around town town, they could have promoted their own event better. Their website, their facebook event, the latest copy of their paper magazine and the ticket itself didn't even include information like whether there was a rain date, whether any seating available (the only seating was on the grass unless you were in VIP), whether there was reentry [there was not], and what was exactly included in the VIP package.
The beer selection ? Decent. They promoted the event as featuring 100+ brews, and I thought they were likely just right around that number, a little under it maybe. Many from local microbreweries, a few big 'micro' ones (new castle, sam adams, yuengling), don't think any of them were from Europe besides Delirium and New
Castle. None of the brews as far as I know were exclusive or limited editions, but there still many of them that I didn't have yet.
On the positive side, they had enough porta-potties, the volunteers and beer reps were nice.
The lines to get the beer weren't bad, I usually waited 3-5 minutes each time but they could also improve on that.
Unfortunately by 4:45 PM, with over an hour left of the event, nearly all but 1 or 2 stations were out of beer.
We left about 45 minutes before it ended, all of the places were out of beer.
Did I have a good time ? Yes. Would I pay that much again ? Nope. I'll try brewzilla or krusty's next time instead, hopefully they wouldn't run of beer there.
If you're interested in going next year, bring your own water, get there early, and bring chairs if you want to sit.
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