The National Capital Craft Beer Festival - a Preview

Great beers. Shame it was so packed but as everyone has said, better that than empty.
It’d be good to have the option of buying a decent size glassful of your chosen tipple once you’ve finished your tasting tickets. Those small glasses just got empty far too quickly!

Still fantastic value.

Based on what I’m hearing I’m betting tickets will be $25-30 next year for sure! 🙁 It always happens!

’twas a sensational day. We got there plenty early and by the time it became packed we’d sampled everything there and were ready to migrate into the bar.

Looking forward to next year already.

I’d wholly echo those sentiments, New Yeah. Having organised roughly 27,000 events over the years, the last thing you want is for the sound of crickets and echos made when a place is only one quarter filled, and then the post-game word of mouth PR is all about how badly attended it was. Believe me, I know all about that!

But to have the place packed to the rafters and for the ‘house full’ sign to go up early in the piece may disappoint many punters, but the buzz it creates means it will be back literally bigger and better. Hopefully it will and it won’t clash with other commitments and I’ll be looking out for it when it rolls around again. (Dodgy freaked out headband-wearing hippie poster children notwithstanding!)

Apparently the event is such a success they’ve been turning away anyone without a pre-paid ticket. A bigger venue would appear to beckon for next year

We got there at 1pm and were turned away due to our lack of pre-paid tickets. So we just went to the bar at the front, had a couple of cold ones and came back an hour or so later. No worries.

I ended up with nearly 50% more beer tickets than they gave me due to the kindness of others. It was a good day.

If the organisers are reading this, maybe use a bigger venue?
I’d imagine it would be horridly difficult to plan for an event like this when one has never been run in the city before. From the organisers’ perspective, it would no doubt be preferable to have a smaller venue and have to turn some people away in the first year than pay more for larger one and end up out of pocket.
For those of us who pre-purchased, as the website suggested (the phrase “Pre purchase your ticket to avoid disappointment” is not always just a throw-away line), it was a tops day – plenty of excellent beers to sample and a very friendly atmosphere. As you’d expect from a sold-out event, it was pretty crowded, though, and so if you wanted long chats with the brewers then earlier in the day was the time to do it.

Arriving at the door to hear “We’re at capacity, so only prepurchased ticketholders are getting in, maybe come back in a few hours!” from a screaming german guy at the door meant that our group didn’t get in.

Our only prepaid ticketholder then on-sold his for a profit, though.

If the organisers are reading this, maybe use a bigger venue?

my farts stink

Images of some of the nights activities and notable persons should be added shortly 🙂