New York Brewfest 2010

We went here with a big group of people for my husband’s Birthday and had a blast, hence the three stars. As far as the actual event goes, I am surprised no one got trampled to death. The wait to get there was long, the lines for each beer were long, the food lines were long. We had two people designated for each line, and some (the food) were over an hour long. Clearly this event was oversold, but if it had ²⁄₃ less people, it would be perfect.

I had a really awesome time at Brewfest, but that doesn’t mean they deserve a nice review. I think pretty much everyone has said everything that needs to be said… there were entirely too many people and not enough breweries or brews, not enough food, no music, blah blah blah. It was like a giant outdoor frat fest. Could have been a lot better.

This event was a total rip-​off. I felt dumb and silly for buying a ticket. I felt like the event was totally oversold and the folks planning it probably knew that since they plan Brewfest every year. If you see any positive reviews here, its probably the Brewfest people trying to save face. I would never ever go to another Brewfest event EVER again, nor would I let my friends go. What a disaster. The money would have been muc better spent on a dive bar in the South Street seaport.
Friends don’t let friends go to Brewfest!!!

Beer Christmas I expected, Beer Chanukah I received.
The Third Annual Brewfest was one of my favorite NYC events I can ever remember attending. A big party in the rain with nothin but good beer available for when you get thirsty.
The Fourth Annual Brewfest however was a lot of people that most likely pregamed waiting too long for too little beer… complete with people that were too good for the line and cut right to the front pissing me offf in the process. Governors Island was nice (I’m providing them a second star for introducing me to the Island), but a huge pain to get on and off of with this giant crowd. While the venue itself was nice, it was also too big for the event. Sure, there were lots of breweries present, but the move felt like an opportunity for the organizers to have more people to make everyone wait longer between fill ups than it did an opportunity to grow the event itself. Seemed to me a way to be able to just sell more tickets, rather than offer more to the customers.
I will say this though, once the crowds started heading toward the line up for the ferry back to manhattan, it felt more like Brewfest again, with the lines moving quickly and the ability to get the beers you came for.
If its back on the Island again next year (despit how much I liked the island itself, it was NOT a good venue for Brewfest), I’ll probably skip it.

If someone told you that you’d be taking a boat trip to your own private booze island, you’d probably say: «That sounds awesome.» And it does sound pretty awesome, I’ll give you that. But as far as the execution is concerned… well, not so much.
1) The process of getting to Governor’s Island was complete pandemonium. Just a huge crush of bodies on a sweaty summer day all massed at Pier 11, jostling for position at the front to board a ferry. Between the crowd and the multiple i.d./pass/security checkpoints, the process of just getting in took over an hour. That’s valuable beer-​swilling time that rightfully belongs to me.
2) They didn’t blast the Jurassic Park theme music as we approached the island. Huge missed opportunity, guys.
3) There’s a fine line between selling out an event and over-​selling an event. Brewfest was clearly oversold. I know this because I waited in lines varying between 10 and 20 minutes each for measly two sip pours, many of which were sold out before the final hour. I’ve been to Brewfests previously and none of them even approached the incredibly disorganized traffic jam which was this event.
4) The overall result of the poorly planned logistics and massive crowd was that I paid $ 50 to get the equivalent of, like, three (3) or four (4) pints over the course of the day. This is, obviously, a huge rip-​off even factoring for variety.
Based off this experience, I would be extremely reluctant to attend another Beerfest organized by the same people that were responsible for this mess.

Brewfest…
I shake my head in disbelief and disappointment.
You didn’t just sully your own reputation, you sullied mine.
Friends and coworkers who heard me sing your praises asked me what Brewfest I had been to before. I had no answer.
In 2007, and 2008, I would have summed up your event with one word: «Awesome,» though it would come out all slurred and drooly, and I would probably be speaking to a sleeping hobo.
This year, I’ve got two words to sum up your event: Shit. Show.

Wow… so many bad reviews of Brewfest.
I guess I was the lucky few that purchased Connoisseurs tickets. Even though it says it opened at 2:30PM, bf and I arrived on Governors Island close to 1:50PM. We were checked in and entered the gates around 2:15PM. Bf and I were on a mission to try as many beers as we possibly could.
Since this was my first Brewfest, bf had performed research on the 50 best beers in the US for 2010. We matched up that list to the Brewfest vendor list and voila — those were the beer stands we were going to first. That’s our list!
I was slightly surprised that there was a good amount of beers that I’ve tried before. Guess I am a little alcoholic. :)
Highlights of the different beers were tried were the following:
1) Goose Island — summertime — nice & light
2) Harlem — sugar hill golden ale — honey like tasting (I love ales!)
3) Fire island — lighthouse ale — in my buzzed state, I put down this ale as «jocy’s kind of ale — nice and bitter»; bf doesn’t like bitter
4) Southampton — keller pils — bf says that this tastes like weed… I think that means he loves it. ;]
5) Southampton — double white — florally, herbally, & not minerally (courtesy of Andrew Zimmern’s vocabulary!)
6) Fisherman’s Brew — Seasonal — bulvarian wheat — my second favorite; although bf didn’t like this one too much
7) North Coast — red seal ale, crisp refreshing and darker,
8) North Coast — blue star — light and crisp — by far MY FAVORITE, I went back 3 times for refills.
9) Great Divide — Samurai Ale — very similar to North Coast Blue Star; however, Blue Star still rules
Also had a chance to try specialty beers that were specifically open only to Connoisseur ticket holders:
1) Southampton abbott Ale — smooth, chocolaty, & complex
Beers that we liked but didn’t love:
1) Oskar Blues — Yella Pils
2) Founders Brewing — dirty bastard ale — dark, coffee, & chocolaty tasting
Beers not so fond of:
1) Thomas Hooker — watermelon ale — had an aspartame aftertaste
2) Heartland Brewery — belgian indiana pale ale — too bitter
3) Troubadour — Blonde — complex but can’t drink a lot
4) Ithaca Apricot Wheat — bf didn’t like the aftertaste; it was dry and almost felt aspartame aftertaste
5) Long Trail — Summer Ale — simply «disgusting»
There were also other samples of beers that we tried… we were either too buzzed or it wasn’t memorable at that point in time.
I went back into my camera and saw that I took this picture (
) at 3:30PM. As shown, it wasn’t too busy. It got really busy around 4:00PM when majority of the crowds arrived. At that point, bf and I had tried close to 20 beers each, so we were happily buzzed* and headed home. In my buzzed state, I definitely do remember being super annoyed at the fact that there were too many people around.
—–
*happily buzzed because he and I had gone Outrigger Paddling that morning and didn’t have anything to eat until after our 10^th tasting of beer

I hate to give out only one star, but unfortunately the 4^th Annual NY Brewfest is deserving of it.
For the amount of money paid to get a ticket and for the actual sampling you were able to do given the length of the lines, it was not worth it. The one really interesting sample that stood out was a watermelon ale from Thomas Hooker; I don’t usually like beers with those types of flavors, but this was surprisingly refreshing and light.
The food lines were the worst — we waited over an hour just to get a stupid cheeseburger that we were supposed to get for free but the Unilocal promo for a free burger wasn’t communicated to the front-​line employees. Inconsiderate clowns were forming their own lines trying to beat the system.
It got to the point where one of us would go and wait in line for samples and the other would wait in the food line; not exactly the way I wanted to spend my time at the festival.
The only upside to the event was Governors Island itself, plus the ferry ride in and out. It’s an interesting little place and you feel hours away from NYC even though you have great views of it and even Jersey City.
Overall, if you are going to attempt this next year, go EARLY to beat the rush as much as you can. Hopefully, they will figure out how to organize this better in the future.
UPDATE: The good folks at Heartland Brewery mailed Unilocalers (who registered for Brewfest with the promo code for a free burger per ticket holder) gift certificates to make up for the mistake — much appreciated!

I’m not sure where to begin. I headed over there around 2:30 b/​c I knew it was going to be chaos. When we got there the line was already building for the 3:30 but noticed it getting very very crammed with only a few lines. I decided to cut, yea I’m that jerk that did it, but if I didn’t I wouldn’t have gotten in until 4:30pm. When I was in the first hour was fine mainly b/​c of all the shlubs still pushing to get in. Around 6 pm, the Murray Hill jacka$$‘s ran the show and cut everyone and anything in line and it took over 30 mins.
By 6pm the mood of the crowd turned a bit as some stands were running out of beer and others just getting pissed that they couldn’t get any. The food lines were insane and I decided it was a liquid diet for me all day. Music made me feel like I was at a Phish show (Who’s got my extra! Goo balls, get your goo balls) as they played sloppy songs.
We cut out at 6pm before I punched a MH kid or a cop in which he could only shoot a couple of us before he had to reload but I figured it wasn’t worth it. When I got to the docks I was amazed, it was a crush like the Russians trying to escape Stalingrad in WWII. BK on one side and Mahattan on the other, but the trick was to know of the magical mystery ferry which the event organizers didn’t tell you about. We watched enough of the ‘oops we aren’t going to BK cutters’ and made it to the other normal ferry and got on.
This event had a TON of promise but was way over sold and not organized at all. They are proud to sell out all 4 beerfests but I doubt it will happen again for a 5^th time. Cash rules everything around us and I hope they got their fair share b/​c it’s 2 thumbs down for me and my hipster doofus east village friends.

I was disappointed in the event — I didn’t hate it quite as much as some others on here, but it was certainly a waste of time and $ 55. I would have tasted more interesting beer — and far more of it – by dropping $ 55 at Whole Foods or New Beer Distributors.
It wasn’t about the chance to drink unlimited volumes of beer — what I really hoped to get out of the event was the chance to try new things and talk with brewers. But instead, what I got was a series of lines to get in, followed by yet more lines inside. (I never even tried to get food — that line was insane.) Because each line for beer was 50 – 60 people long, there was no time to talk to anyone about the beer — there were just too many people waiting. And the beer itself was pretty ordinary — just the standard stuff from each brewery. (Again, all easily available at Whole Foods.) Certainly not anything worth waiting on line for.
Still, at first the lines moved pretty fast — maybe 10 – 15 minutes for a sample. But by around 5 the beer had started to run out and the frat-​boy types had started cutting to the front of lines as they got drunk — and so the last line I stood in took 30 minutes. At that point I gave up and left — I definitely spent less than 2 hours there, and maybe had 6 samples.
I was off the island before the craziness ensued trying to get boats back — if I had waited in a long line to get home, too, I would probably have felt affirmatively angry about the whole thing. But as it was, I just felt like I wasted an afternoon and $ 55 — I didn’t hate it, but I definitely wouldn’t ever go again.
I’m sure there are enough frat-​boys out there who will continue to jump at the chance for unlimited beer (even if they’d be better off just going to the bar — $ 55 will buy you eleven pints at the Pony, more than enough to get knee-​walking drunk). So this event will undoubtedly continue to thrive, and just become more of a «Bro-​Fest.» But for people actually interested in beer, don’t bother — this event isn’t for you. Instead, gather your friends, throw $ 55 each into a community pot, and buy a dozen or so bombers of the really good stuff — you’ll have more fun, and drink far more beer.

Probably one of the worst-​planned festivals I have ever been to — lines galore, ran out of cups for the beer, ran out of food, ran out of maps of the grounds/​breweries, YET, one of the best days I’ve had in a long long time. Thank you beer for making everything better.

LINES LINES LINES LINES! Horrible.

Absolutely horrendous. From start to finish, this event was a disaster. The line to get on the free Brewfest ferry was disorganized and extremely long. Any hope of getting there by 3:30 was hopeless. My friend and I opted to walk down a few blocks and take the Governor’s Island ferry. When we got to the island, we then had to walk a long way down and around to get to another massive line, which was really more like a huge cluster of people in front of the entrances. My friend couldn’t even pull up his mobile ticket because there was no AT&T service on the island! Are you kidding me? Once we got into the event (finally around 4:30), we were even more frustrated to find that there were long lines at every single brewery stand. In an hour’s time, we got about 5 samples of beer — the lines took 10 – 20 minutes to finally get a sample. I thought about food for a second — until I saw the line that was not moving. After realizing we would never get to visit the brewery stands we wanted, and being sick of dealing with line cutters left and right, we left the fest at 6 and got the first water taxi out of there. The water taxi was filled with other people who were also disgusted. As we walked off the taxi, one guy said, «Let’s get a beer.» That pretty much summed up the entire experience. $ 55 and an entire Saturday gone to waste.

I took the free ferry from Jersey City and was able to catch some of the Red Bull Air Show on the way, which was cool. Everything was great until we got up the hill from the ferry to where the Brew Fest was — it was SO disorganized I couldn’t believe it was the 4^th time this event has been held. Hundreds of people were sent to an area where there were single file lines to get in — no one was giving any instructions and there was no order. After finally getting into the event, the beer tents were set up so close to eachother that as soon as everyone was in you had to wait on line forever to get a beer sample. Then since the booths were right on top of eachother if you wanted to take a second to drink the sample you had before going to the next one you clogged up the whole area and were forced out of the way. It was nice how the tents were under the shade of really large trees, on a hot day that was very convenient.
My boyfriend and I drank for a while and then decided to get something to eat. We waited on line for the Heartland Brewery Buffalo Spring Rolls for over 30 minutes without the line moving. Finally we decided to get off line since it seemed like we would never get to the front. There were a few booths set up serving food but all the lines were at a near stand still. Later I got a chance to look behind the food booths and it seemed like they were trying to feed hundreds of people with a hibachi grill and mini fryer. The event was sold out, so you would think they could have better prepared for the amount of people that would be there.
The only time I really got to hear the live music was when I was standing on the neverending food line. They had the stage shoved between the portable bathrooms and the food area so there wasn’t really a nice place to hang out and enjoy the music.
Lastly, there was complete chaos when trying to leave. The event was set to end at 8pm but the group I was with decided to leave early to beat the rush — yeah right. The lines were ½ mile long to get back on the ferries heading either to Manhattan or Brooklyn. We got lucky and were somehow herded onto a barge that normally carries cars so it didn’t take too long to get back to the city.
Some of the pros of the event were that there were a lot of bathrooms and tons of security. They definitely got that part right.
Cons were poor set up, shitty service and complete lack of information.
Hopefully next year they can take advantage of how great the property is at Governor’s Island and serve up an event that can handle all the people who paid $ 60 to get in. I however will not be there to see if they can manage this since I was so disappointed this year.

I believe that everyone who attended Brewfest on Governor’s Island this past weekend was betrayed. We were promised for 55 dollars (not including taxes and fees) that we would receive ” …samplings from over 300 styles of handcrafted beers from more than 100 breweries. Great local foods will be available for purchase, and New York bands will perform throughout the evening. The event is a venerable gumbo of the Empire State’s creativity.” (
) We did not receive any of this.
To get to the island it took over an hour with the lines at Pier 11. The lines were disorderly, crowded and insultingly ridiculous. Once on the island it was a 15 minute walk until you met the ultimate betrayal. There may have been over 100 breweries but I wouldn’t know as the lines were so ridiculous that we have to leave after and hour or two. The event consisted of waiting in line for 15 minutes, getting your four ounce cup filled, moving to the next line and waiting fifteen minutes again. At this pace it took one hour to drink one pint of beer. So basically, if you were lucky and got on Governors Island for the entire five hour event you would have been able to have five beers at eleven dollars a pop not including food.
Which brings me to the next issue. The food. The lines for food were even worse than the lines for beer. The lines for food were over an hour. So if you DID want to eat that means it took away one of your beers you could have drank.
Finally, the bands. What bands? I believe I heard one band play for about fifteen minutes and they sucked.
What is even worse is that the Brewfest Facebook Fan page deleted its wall and ability to write on the wall after it received so many complaints. Instead of apologizing to the thousands of people who attended this event and wasted their hard earned money, they betrayed everyone even more by deleting what little voice they had. Fortunately a disgruntled patron created a Brew Fest Sucks group
but at this time it only has twenty-​two members. I invite you to see the group and the pictures people have posted regarding their unhappiness with the event.
I truly believe the thousands of people who purchased tickets to this event were misled, misguided and BREWTRAYED.

Here’s an email I sent to the brewfest clowns. Sums up my thoughts.
You should be ashamed of yourselves. This past Saturday’s brewfest was one of the most poorly managed outdoor events I have ever seen. As a patron of years 2 and 3 of this festival, I talked it up so much to my friends and really had faith that the move to Governors Island meant that the organizers recognized the bottleneck that the Seaport was presenting and were going to do their best to make it an enjoyable experience in the larger space. You even made it a point to put on the website that you made changes to make sure that lines were reduced. Well, all you did was move the whole thing to a bigger area, but without adding any breweries. What did you think that would do? Are you seriously that incapable of planning?
Anyone with half of a brain would know that when you bring in thousands of more people but maintain about the same number of breweries, lines will be longer; it doesn’t matter how big of an area the event is held in. You seemed to fail to understand that very simple logic. Or, maybe you understood it perfectly but just didn’t care. That seems to make more sense, you don’t care. The first indication that you were clueless was the fact that you don’t open the gates until the event started (3:30). The vast majority of people didn’t get in until after 4:30 because you only had 5 blue-​shirted people checking id’s for thousands of people. Yes, you go ahead and sell thousands of tickets for the event, and know full well that checking id’s would be a big deal, and yet when we get to the front of the line we literally count on one hand the number of people checking id’s. So in other words, we pay a flat rate of $ 55 for a 5 hour event, but now we lose out on an hour because we’re waiting in line to get in. Then one of your idiots gets on a bulhorn while we’re waiting and tells us to be patient. Do you really think that’s going to work with a group that large? Then when we get in, we see that there are really no more breweries than there were in the past, but there are in fact thousands of more people. So what did that mean for everyone in attendance? A 15 minute wait at each tent for 4 – 5 ounces of beer. You are pure amateurs, nothing more.
Rest assured, you will never get my money ever again. Or anyone I ever come across who even so much as mentions the event. I will tell them how you couldn’t care less about making sure people have a good time, it’s all about the money for you. You certainly don’t mind that I’m not going anymore, because you’ll continue to sell out each year because most people don’t care, and that’s fine. But something had to be said, and I hope whoever was in charge reads this letter, because you are completely incompetent. The event was absolutely terrible.

Pros were a great beer selection. Cons were the overcrowding and long waits. I thought the waits and crowds were so bad that they pretty heavily outweighed the great selection.
Since my main complaint is about all the waiting, I’ve listed them below. Other people might not care as much about this as I did (maybe you just want a nice day outdoors with some good beer) so I’ll say what happened rather than just say that it was bad.
I arrived at Pier 11 a half hour before the beer would start being served on the island. I waited about 20 – 30 minutes for water taxis. This seemed like a reasonable wait since it’s tough to get thousands of people to the island, so this was no big deal. Once we arrived on the island, however, we waited for another 20 or 30 minutes in a big blob of people in front of the entrance gate waiting for someone to take our tickets and let us in. The ticket-​takers scanners seemed to be broken so they just started letting people in who a printout.
Once inside, there were hundreds of great beers available at the Fest in individual tents around the border of the park. There was a long line (50 feet, maybe 5 – 10 minutes wait) to get a 3-​ounce sample of each. This is much worse than the excellent BeerAdvocate beer fests in Boston where you don’t wait for more than a minute or so for each beer and you can actually talk to the pourers about their beer without being pushed aside for the next person.
The line for food took about 40 minutes. People were getting pretty tense due to the long waits — a woman in front of me lit into a guy who tried to cut in front of her in line and her husband actually called the police over.
All in all, I tried a few great beers, but the long wait times, overcrowding, and poor logistics soured my experience.

This was a great event for people that like waiting in line. Other than that, it was pretty bad.
We found one little spot behind some shrubbery where there were 3 breweries without any lines. We hung out there for a couple hours (gotta give some credit to Smuttynose, Bard’s, and Cisco for filling up our cups numerous times). This was the only positive of the day.
For next year’s Brewfest, I think I’ll take my $ 55 and hit up a local beer garden.
Oh — and when we were near the entrance, some guy was trying to get an extra cup, when this angry dude started screaming at him «WE HAVE 10,000 CUPS FOR 10,000 PEOPLE!» So — they sold 10,000 tickets at $ 55 a piece for ~100 breweries (I think 100 breweries is a huge overestimate). They knew exactly what they were getting into. Pathetic.

This was a nightmare! Unilocal won’t let me give out 0 stars! Anyone who went to this event knew of the horrible, nightmarish, disorganized, unacceptable conditions we had to endure. Do NOT go to this event next year, or EVER! SAVE YOURSELF!
NYC brewfest you straight up stole my money! $ 55 plus tax Plus some i wanna steal more of your money handling fee was NOT worth what anyone had to go through. Unless you spent $ 75 you did not have a good time at all.
Getting on the island was horrible. Long lines, the entire day was long lines. Long lines, getting herded in, waiting for the water taxi. Then sitting on the boat waiting for the boat to doc cause they didn’t know how to handle the volume of people. Walking halfway around the island to get to Brewfest. No order, no signs, no bars or dividers when trying to get in. There were long lines trying to sample beer. People were surround the keg and stand there blocking people. Its not a bar people! Get your beer and get out the way! Lines for beer took way too long.
Forget about the food line, it was over an hour wait to get food, and they ran out of potatoes, and cheese for chips and burgers. Over priced food. The staff did not know what was going on and did not communicate with anyone on what to do. There was NO security inside the brewfest when people were cutting, when people got sick, if you had a problem you were on your own.
Porta pottys had no toilet paper, it wasn’t even a whole day event people! There was NO water in the sinks, so you just have to hope the alcohol people spilled on you killed most of the germs.
I did not sample $ 55 worth of beer. It was a complete rip off! People do not waste your hard earned money on this event! Don’t get swindled by them!
Getting off the island was even worse. Left the event at 7. Ended up standing on the hard cobblestone near the boats for an hour. Course the boats going to brooklyn were going while everyone else was just standing there, and the staff knew nothing. One staff girl in a ponytail with black hair, (yes I remember her the big liar!) told us that we had to move onto the side where the boats were going to brooklyn, cause that’s where all the boats were leaving from. 2 seconds after people move to the right side, the staff decides to let the ppl go through from where I was originally standing. WTF? Seriously, communicate!
I was almost trampled and stampeded by angry drunk people. I ended up taking the govenor’s ferry for cars, which clearly sounds very illegal due to the number of drunk people on the boat vs actual life jackets/​savers. Once we got off the boat the sidewalk was blocked with a metal gate, and there was a van blocking the way ONLY way to get on the sidewalk. So we ended up walking on the street. Yes walking on the FDR, a bunch of drunk people, and not a cop in sight. Awesome planning right?
This event was oversold by the greedy «organizers». They oversold and knew it, they didn’t make necessary arrangements, and didn’t care. They stole our money, and the staff was inept, and rude. I will NEVER go back, and in all sincerity hope no one else gets ripped off by them. I’m also boycotting heartland brewery as they sponsored it as well as the NY brewer’s association.
I like how their facebook page deleted all the negative comments and they got rid of their discussions/​forum. Maybe if they were organized and cared about the event they wouldn’t be so greedy to steal people’s money!
Update 6÷24÷10
I emailed them and they gave me a cookie cutter response, BUT what made me angrier was that they stated that gov’s island required them to have the event open to the public! WTF?! Which means people could just walk in, there was no one checking wristbands, so why did you charge me $ 55 plus taxes and fees if anyone could stroll in? I demanded my money back. It wasn’t a request, I emailed them demanding a refund.
I also emailed Heartland Brewery. Jon the founder/​CEO responded as he too was not happy with what happened there, and they sponsored the event which was clearly unorganized. He said he would get back to me.
I emailed the NY Brewer’s association, and got no response. But this morning I got a refund from Brewfest! Finally! I can put it all behind me. I guess Jon did talk to them, or put pressure on them, clearly as their name was being dragged through the mud.
Brewfest overall is the worst thing I have ever experienced and I hope that NO ONE else ever goes to this event in the future. SAVE your hard earned money people!

300 unique brews, 100 breweries, 1 4-​ounce sample glass, a gazillion people waiting in line.
When we first arrived at the gate, there were already massive lines. Luckily, a line had just opened on the far-​left side and my friends and I slipped in no time. We dove into the first row of breweries immediately — and came out about 10 beers ahead of everyone who was still waiting in line.
After about 25 samples, we were feeling bloated-​yet-​hungry. The first food stand had preposterous lines already but the one all the way back by the stage was still untapped. The HB Burgers were amazing considering they were mass-​cooked. Thumbs down to the girl whose sole responsibility was to open buns and put them on the paper plates. Lines were building up because service was so slow –mostly because the potato chips were being packed as they were getting ordered. Maybe bun girl should have given the potato chip folks a hand instead of building the leaning tower of burger buns. Those chips were delicious but detrimental to the efficiency of the food line. After a quick breather, it was back into the fray.
There was so much beer that — really — they all started to fit under two categories: «I can drink this» and «Oh hell no, I don’t have room for this. NEXT!» IPA lost its charm after the 12^th sample. Sad that 21^st Amendment wasn’t showcasing their Monk’s Blood brew. Goose Island was a nice new find as was Ellicottville Brewing Co.
Glad to see that the Unilocal tent was garnering ridiculous attention. Jane K. was workin’ that wheel and handing out stuff nonstop.
NY Brewfest, I hope you learned your lesson this year and will make the proper adjustments next year. It’s pretty much a unanimous decision that you allowed way too many people to buy tickets. Next year, reward those of us who actually cared to buy our tickets in advance. Governor’s Island is only so big and brews can only be served so fast — don’t get greedy now!
As with any large event, you’ve got to take flight early to beat the crowd to the exit. In this case, we left at Brewfest at 7PM and managed to get on a ferry within 15 minutes. I know for sure that anyone who left after 7:30PM was gonna have to wait at least triple that. Moral of the story: arrive early, leave early.
A 5 star event brought down by overcrowding. But hey, I was in the company of good people and we were relatively patient. I’m sure others will deduct much more for the amount of time they had to wait.