Days That End in Y

As you may recall, last Saturday was the 5th Annual Boston Winter Jubilee run by Beer Summit. It featured 7% or higher ABV beers from over 35 breweries around the world, and oh boy, did we feel it! We attended the first session, which was noon to 4 PM and were gone by 3 PM, as we were so drunk that we could barely see straight. The T ride home was not fun, and I drunkenly managed to add $28.80 to a new CharlieTicket, as the Link Pass I borrowed wasn’t working. (For those not familiar with Boston’s oh-so-fantastic public transportation, there has been a recent change in fare prices and logistics. Combine that with a complete lack of helpful T officials and the consumption of way too much beer, and the city gets a $28.80 donation from me.)

A tip for future attendees: go to the second session instead. That way, you don’t end up sleeping from 4 PM - 9 PM on a Saturday and screwing up your entire weekend. I would’ve posted my recap yesterday, but I was still recovering from the experience. In fact, I did vomit on Saturday evening (a fairly rare occurrence), as did my friend Faye. That resulted in my canceling both my Sunday day ski trip to Killington (Ride a bus for three hours while wanting to puke and not having slept all night? No, thanks.) and the Chardonnay wine party we ludicrously thought we could attend on Saturday night.

Anyway, I suppose I should devote at least some of this entry to the Beer Summit itself rather than its ill aftereffects, so here’s a summary of my opinion of the Winter Jubilee: good beer selection and great overall atmosphere, but the Summit needs work. Here’s why:

First, I want to commend Mike Munnelly for putting together a great selection of brewers and beers. Just look at this brewer list:

Abita Brewing, Affligem, Allagash Brewing, Boston Beer Works, Belikus, Berkshire Brewing, Brooklyn Brewery, Boston Beer, Boulder Beer, Cambridge Brewing, Chimay, Cisco, Concord Brewing, Dogfish Head, Eurobrew, Franziscaner, Gardner Ale House, Geary’s, Gritty’s, Harpoon, Ithaca, Lefthand, Long Trail, Merchant du Vin, Mercury, Newport Storm, North Brewing Coast, Oscar Blues, Offshore Ale, Ommegang, Opa Opa Steak, Otter Creek, Owen O’Leary’s, Paper City, Paulaner, Rogue Ales, Rock Art, Shelton Brothers, Smuttynose, Southern Tier, Spaten NA, Stoudt’s, Stone Brewing, Stone Coast, The Tap, Unibroue, Vanberg DeWulfe, and Woodstock

That’s incredible (though I honestly don’t remember a couple of these being present)! Every brewer had around three or four beers available, most of them appropriate for the season (think plenty of stouts, winter ales, etc.). Many of the beers weren’t too common, and there were some happy surprises. For example, Oskar Blues was there handing out free Old Chub Sticks. Score! Ipswich was selling their incredibly tasty beer mustard, which I forgot to buy. And very scarily, Cisco Brewers brought along bottles of Triple Eight Vodka and was handing out shots along with beers. Beer Summit? Think BEER Summit!

Second, I really enjoyed the atmosphere. Having a live band? Awesome. Hosting it at the Castle? Awesome. There was a certain liveliness at the Boston Winter Jubilee that had a very different vibe from the liveliness present at Beer Advocate beer fests. Both are definitely heavy on good (craft) beer and fun, but Beer Summit definitely emphasizes fun a bit more. I was also surprised that the numerous random people I talked to hadn’t ever gone to Beer Advocate beer fests. It seems like the attendees to these two different beer fests are mutually exclusive. Why? I don’t know, but this must say something about the difference in ambience.

Third, I love the presence of non-brewer booths. While I had little interest in the cigar booth, I did enjoy seeing all the beer-related merchandise for sale. Plus, the Beer Goddess Transformation Chamber from Ale Street News was pretty neat, even if completely unused. Many of the brewers were also selling posters, t-shirts, pint glasses, and other assorted items. If I recall correctly, Chimay even had ashtrays. This combined with music makes for more than just a stodgy beer fest, creating something of a party bazaar instead.

Unfortunately, these three great things only lead up to my list of criticisms:

First, where’s the water? Seriously, there needs to be water. A couple of the brewers brought their own water fountains for cleaning out cups, but that was it. A good beer fest needs plenty of water to keep attendees hydrated and to clean out cups.

Second, pulled pork stuffed into a cheap hot dog bun is not worth $5. This is one area where Beer Summit needs to take a cue from Beer Advocate and find someone better to cater food. Beer Advocate has gourmet beer-inspired cuisine catered by Sunset Grill & Tap. Beer Summit has bad cafeteria food. Even worse, the food is actually cut off from the rest of the space by the line of people waiting to get carded and wristbanded. As I stood there waiting for my friend to return with her food, no fewer than three people asked me how in the world I got my pulled pork “sandwich”. When you’re serving beer, especially high ABV beers, food becomes a necessity. It’s even better if your attendees can get to the food. Plus, it might as well taste good, too.

Third, what’s with the tickets? The fill line on the crappy plastic non-souvenir cup measures at 2 oz. Massachusetts law doesn’t require a physical exchange for servings of 2 oz. or less, so why did I get ten tickets? More importantly, if there are tickets, then why didn’t the brewers ask for them? Only one brewer asked me for a ticket the entire time. While it’s fun to play the I’m-not-giving-you-a-ticket-unless-you-ask game, if you’re going to have tickets, then you should enforce the collection of tickets. However, if you’re going to have 2 oz. pours and aren’t going to collect tickets anyway, then just don’t bother. We also didn’t see any way to buy more tickets, though that turned out to be unnecessary.

Fourth, there desperately need to be more bathroom facilities. After a couple hours, the bathroom lines stretched all the way from the basement, up the stairs, and spilled out into the brewer area. I actually just left, went elsewhere, and came back, as there was simply no way that I could stand in that line without accidentally soaking the person in front of me.

Fifth, publish a guide to the beers. I can recall maybe one or two beers out of the God knows how many I drank that afternoon. It would be an useful souvenir for future reference, and it would’ve really helped with navigating among the different brewers. Instead of planning on attacking different booths to try different beers, I instead wandered about aimlessly just picking random beers to sample. A guide would also really help ease the pain of all those people waiting behind indecisive drinkers hogging the front of the line, because then we could just say “RTFM“.

Anyway, that said, I’ll be back for the next Beer Summit event, because beer selection trumps all. However, I’ll be sure to eat beforehand and to bring my own bottle of water.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 29th, 2007 at 3:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.