Utah's beer lovers got a "wee bit of the shaft" during this years legislative session when Senator John Valentine saw fit to change poorly written beer laws to comply with his anti-normal, soul-saving views.The change I refer to was the short lived, one price gets unlimited 3 oz samples admission in beer festivals. The first and last time it was tried was during the inaugural 2010 City weekly Utah Beer festival.
Just because the one ticket system is gone, doesn't mean there can't be a beer fest. There have been beer fest going on in Utah since the early/mid 90's. We're just going to have to go back to the old token system.
Anyway, The City weekly is going to try the beer fest again this year. Last year, they got a lot of flack for "lack of planning". I think those comments were slightly harsh. Considering they'd never tried putting on a beer fest before. I'm confident that the CW kids learned what did and didn't work and are implementing those changes.
The date is Saturday, Aug. 27, 2011 and will likely take place again at Washington Square (the Salt Lake City & County Building). At this years fest look for 3 oz samples of over 40 of Utah's award winning brews, including full strength brew varieties. As the event gets closer, we'll update all info.
What changes would you like like to see implemented for this year's fest?
Cheers!
10 comments:
The change I would like to see for the Utah Beer Fest is Utah legislators not having anything to do with it.
More and more spread out distribution locations.
Ditto to that.
And the word is that tickets will be $20 a pop that will include 10 drink tickets to start you out with.
If it's anything like what I've seen at Snowbird I am not interested. Insane 30 minutes lines for a beer are horrible. The organizers need to push breweries to being more beer and more people. Small pours should be super easy. Think Mountain Brewers Festival.
The token system ain't so bad. I've been to festivals in other states that have the same thing. You adapt to it rather easily. And if they actually think things out in advance, they can come up with some cool tokens. One festival I went to some years ago used wooden nickels.
As for improvements, the biggest thing would be to have plenty of beer and to spread the brewers out enough so that it doesn't become one big jumbled mess. I agree with Douglas a little about Snowbird, but remember how limited they are on space up there. Besides, I went early and had no problems, but I did see the mess when I left.
It can be real easy - only accept tokens at the tents and keep people hustling through with decent lines and good spacing. It may also help if they either gave everyone one cup to use for the day (meh) or the brewers all had the same cups and just filled a few to make sure the line keeps moving.
I would like to see multiple entrances. It was a mess just getting in. Echoing what others have said, please spread out the distribution out a bit.
I don't know, $20 for ten drink tokens (essentially 30 ozs) seems a bit steep in price.
Even if that is the price I will go anyway, if only to show the legislature that there are responsible beer drinkers here.
Cheers,
Scott
Im wondering why doesnt the Utah beer fest incorporate the use of Tracks and Front Runner? If you buy a ticket for the beer fest, ride for free. This way you dont have to worry about drunk drivers, or not as many! And admission is $15 with 5 tokens. More tokens can be purchased there and also you can get tokens for 3 or 12 oz samples. Also you get to keep the mug!
Last year's festival was a huge failure. We went up there, but after looking through fences, at all the carnage, we couldn't run away fast enough.
People did NOT look like they were having a good time. Stuck in long lines. Groups of people sitting down in line, leaning against the chain link fences like prisoners.
In Utah, you're paying $20 to enter a highly legislated, temporary dog pound.
No thanks.
I went to the beer festival today and it was a rip-off. Fifteen dollars for five tickets and a cheap, teensy plastic cup. Add on top of that the enormously long lines- waited 40 minutes for just one beer and used 4 of my 5 tickets. Gave away my last ticket as I was not going to wait in another line. It seemed that the event was poorly planned and not prepared for the size of crowd that was present. The drink tickets is not a bad idea- I have been to other beer festivals out of state that also used drink tickets. I will not go to this festival again nor would I recommend that anyone else attend.
Yep, total rip-off. $15 for five drink tickets and the average beer is 5 tickets. So I paid $15 for my first beer. The Uinta line was over an hour wait and the Epic line was just under an hour. Anyone who is thinking about going to this event next year should just go to a bar or restaurant, sit on the patio and have a beer or two. You'll probably find that your waitress can deliver your beer in a fraction of the time it takes to get through a SLC Beerfest line and that you actually get what you pay for. While I'm sure the event was a commercial success (since it sold out), it succeeded by taking advantage of people. It was an embarrasment to Salt Lake City.
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