First off lets give credit where credit is due. Thank you to all the suppliers, vendors, restaurants who took part in this event. It was great that so many people took the opportunity to sample beer that is not ‘mainstream’.
Now the not so good:
1. This show was grossly oversold
2. According to the website there were over 140 beers and ciders available for sampling with over half being unavailable from the NSLC. Fair enough great selection for sure, but you should have also mentioned that they were only available in about 10 tents that were cramped together is the ‘spacious venue.’
3. Thank you to Scanway Catering, Rudder’s Seafood & The Port Pub for the food. The only beef I have with this is that the food was available at an extra cost. Remember ticket costs were $40
4. You are in need of better crowd control. A lot of people were jumping the fence to get admission to the event; no one even seemed to care.
5. We personally heard a lot of complaints from patrons who attended the event the past 2 years about how you really over sold the event. Some areas were just inaccessible.
6. The venue should be made more wheelchair accessible as well. We witnessed several people in wheelchairs that could not move freely about the area.
7. More supervision is required in the area. So many people were intoxicated, puking and the like with no one around to remove them from the premises.
8. Wow, what a young group of people. With the ease of gaining entrance, or purchasing tickets, people should have been required to show proper identification at the gate when presenting their ticket. There were not just a couple of people underage. I am willing to bet that there were at least 50 -100.
9. A good idea would be to have a tent in the centre of the venue where officers could be easily accessible just in case of an emergency. For example last evening we encountered a lady that was disorientated and lost her husband in the crowd. We took it upon ourselves to call a cell phone number the lady gave us to locate the missing husband, who was removed from the area.
Ill give this event another try next year. Since the Coast is one of the sponsors of this event, I would suggest that they pay attention to the comments that are going to be made in the next few days.
This is a fair event. More thought needs to put into the planning, preparation and setup. Take a look at the success of the Port Of Wines Festival for tips and tricks on organization.
—Whineo
This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2009.
I agree wholeheartedly with Whineo. This is the first Beerfest I attended. I have been to other NSLC tasting events (Beach Party, wine, spirits) and have to say I was severely disappointed in this one. My biggest beef was the size of the crowd vs. the size of the venue. This was not a bar; there was no need for the hundreds of people in there to be rubbing up against each other to get a 3 oz sample of beer.
I did not mind paying the $35 plus tax for the ticket for the other events, as I feel I got my money’s worth. This time though, what a rip off. And, I didn’t even care that I had to pay for food (Rudder’s fish cakes in Halifax was the best thing ever!), I just wish there was more room.
I went to the afternoon session and didn’t find it too crowded or too unruly. I also found the crowd to be older and less rowdy. Perhaps that was the key, because I had a fantastic time… never had to wait more than a few seconds to get a sample and there was never a wait for the bathroom.
My only beefs are that many of the beer samples I got were very warm and there was no mention on the website that food would have an additional charge.
I worked Saturday night and had to drive past the beerfest location just as the majority of loud-mouthed drunken fools were lurching out and staggering into traffic. A fellow worker told me that there was a group of yobs banging on the NSLC outlet on Barrington well after 10:30 to get the staff to open so they could get more beer.
Not a police car or vehicle in sight
I went to the evening session and actually found it better organized than some of the NSLC events I’ve been to at the Cunard Centre.
Yes, it was crowded, but my group didn’t have any trouble getting to all the beers we wanted to sample.
IIRC, this is not a NSLC event, which are usually very well-run, but instead was organized by the brewery at the waterfront. So that probably explains why it was oversold and why food cost extra — they wanted to make as many bucks as they could.
It may be that if underage kids were there or other security/control measures were ignored that this could be the last such event. Unfortunate, but predictable when shortsighted profit motives take preference over responsible event management.
What needs to be done is to change the focus from a ‘Beer Festival’, to a ‘Craft Beer Festival’. Use the American Brewers Association definition of a craft beer to determine who is suitable for such an event:
‘Annual production of beer less than 2 million barrels.’
http://www.beertown.org/craftbrewing/stati…
That will weed out the large entities whose goal is mass sales, and therefor mass drunkenness.
BTW, NSLC may run events, but they aren’t very good at beer events. They have no beer knowledge to make any such event successful. They just cater to the monstrosity on Agricola Street. Fail.
I have to say, with the exception of a couple people, I didn’t witness “mass drunkenness” at all. On the contrary – I thought everyone was remarkably well behaved.
I was there:
http://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/the-seaport…
The Band was amazing! Old Wagon Whisky, check them out!
This was my second year and was way too crowded. It was obivious that they over sold by looking at hundreds of people holding a cheap sample cup. They should have a certain number of tickets, and thats it… If you don’t get one too bad…. Also remember to bring catheter because you won’t be making it to the washroom.