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| - This used to be in Tivoli but has been moved over to Sunset Park. I did not attend the previous location, just this year but I've been to other Motley Brews organized events.
The park has one lane in and out into the parking lots. The closest parking lot was a clusterfuck to get into and had a long queue causing traffic so we parked elsewhere and walked around the park to get down to the area.
The usual suspects are the line up. I usually go purely to those pouring out of taps and not bottles then narrow down to mostly seasonals or specialty brews like Joseph James does exclusively for festivals. Since this was a Spring/Summer fest, there is a strong show of lighter, fresher styles and IPA heavy.
I'm glad craft beer and events are gaining popularity. Events I go to annually are much busier now than they ever been. With that though, I feel they should make sure the space is far more than adequate. Sunset Park is a large park and they used part of the lake as a barrier, and then put up fencing around the festival space. We were not encroaching on the regular park goers space at all, so I feel that could have made the space bigger.
If this was held maybe a month ago, it would have been perfect weather.
It was a hot sunny day and that with drinking is crappy enough. Trying to distinguish where long lines ended and where crowds hanging out begins sucked. Trying to squeeze through people to get places sucked.
One big thing for me is that I like to be able to throw away remnants of my brew, wash it out well before getting a new beer. I noticed some vendors had their own thing behind the bar to do that, some didn't and just dumped the beer in the grass. This is not well prepared at all and was a complaint before in a review 2 years ago, so not a newcomers mistake. I would use my own water bottle to rinse except you know, I actually need to have a lot of water because it is hot and I always hydrate so I don't end up as a sick and sorry as the day progresses. This fest did not provide free waters I could fine (maybe there was and I'm wrong) , there were food vendors with beverages though. I found sporadically a table with a cooler and a dump bucket, but really it was so hard to jump through the crowd to get to the next area, I can't keep going back and forth to the 2 tables I've found in the park grounds to rinse and then push through again.
The combination of being hot, having to touch and get really near people when I'm already feeling sticky and icky, cant find a rinse station, can't find shade, no water made us over it pretty fast. I'm very thankful I got free tickets, but I'm also highly relieved I didn't waste money for this.
With it growing in popularity and is in the 3rd annual state, I feel it should have been more thought out and improved each year. I hate leaving bad reviews, I love supporting craft beer things, but this simply was not pleasant. I didn't know if I should put A-OK 3 stars or a 2 star... but after 2 hours I was done and left to get ice cream in frustration. Maybe A-OK for you, but was not for me.
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