Ballpark BrewBash 2017

Let me start by saying brew festivals are great – they are still a great resource for finding a new favorite beer or beer style. They’re still a great event for gathering up a huge beer buzz, and then finding yourself hammered around dinner time. They’re still a great activity to participate in with a group of friends, especially when some of them are just starting to get into craft beers, and are eager to learn more about styles and flavor profiles. Brew festivals are a means for microbreweries to get real time feedback from their public, and a means for the public to gain education and information from microbreweries. If a brewery staffs its station at a brew fest with unknowledgeable crew, they’re not taking advantage of this awesome opportunity to strengthen their brewery and the bond of their brand with the end user. Maybe that’s a little dramatically put, and maybe some breweries think that the beer should just speak for itself – who knows.  When I ask pretty easy questions like ‘what’s the hop bill on this beer?’ and I get a deer in the headlights look followed by a shrug of the shoulders, your brewery is not taking full advantage of the price you paid to be a vendor at that festival. Also, if you’re the end user, and you just go from station to station without kicking tires at the stations, you’re not taking full advantage of your price of admission. ‘What’s an azacca hop?’ ‘How did you get this porter to taste like a snickers bar?’ ‘what was the inspiration for the funny name of this beer?’ I don’t know, maybe I’m getting old. (I am)

That being said – I went to the BallPark Brew Bash! It was a ton of fun! For those of you that are unfamiliar, they open up the perimeter of CocaCola Field (home of the Bisons) as well as the concourse, and you get drunnnnnnk.

Here’s some pictures:

$35 got you a tasting glass (plastic) And tickets for tastings (that no one took) – so all you can drink while supplies lasted.

Here’s a shot of the field shortly after the event got started, and about an hour and a half into it – crowd really wasn’t that bad.

It seemed that all of the local breweries were on the field, and all of the out of town breweries were in the concourse.

It may seem like there was a heavy crowd by these shots, but in the concourse, I never waited in ‘line’ for a beer. I could just walk up to any of these stations and grab a beer – it was awesome . tons of good stuff. On the field, I waited as much as 5 minutes for a beer, no big deal..

Here are the full shots of the field from my ‘crowd comparison’ shots before:

A juicy new england style ipa!

They let us walk on home plate – how about that.

Me doing a Babe Ruth prediction point, predicting that I’ll be hitting a foul ball.

Well that was exhausting, what now? Oh yeah, I had a hockey game.

and popcorn – sorry people I sat next to, I was probably loud and obnoxious.

I was also probably loud and obnoxious here too – (erica had had enough of my shenanigans at this point. )

Needless to say, there was a lot of sleeping the next day.

 

 

 

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