Now that I’ve finally got the last bit of mud off of my caked shoes, I’m finally able to sit down and pen my thoughts about this year’s festival. Long story short, I had a lot of fun. Yes, it was crowded in the tents because people couldn’t mingle in the mud, but you could still easily get a beer after you shoved your way past the people just standing in front of the servers (something I was even guilty of at times.) I’ve read some other thoughts at BeerAdvocate and even in the comments in this forum and everyone has some very good suggestions. Now here’s a couple of my thoughts:

Grass vs As(phalt)

My biggest complaint, which seems to be the majority opinion, was the complete destruction and mess of the festival field. It made getting around terrible, it made everything and everyone messy and it crowded the tents as people had no place else to go. A few people have suggested that for the sake of festivals to come maybe it should be moved to a parking lot. The argument for the asphalt is that no mess, no fuss and people less likely to trip and fall. The argument against the lot is that it would change the feel of the festival and to a certain extent I agree. I personally enjoy the natural aspect of the festival, but I don’t enjoy being crowded and messy. A better option may be to move the festival to Mid-May rather than early May to avoid some of the late spring rain.

Three Tents Are Better Than Two

I thought the addition of the third beer tent was a welcome addition to the festival as it allowed more beers to be showcased in a large environment. I found that the beers were pretty well spread out and provided a bit more elbow room. I will say I was thrown for a bit when I went into the Ale tent and didn’t see some of the Belgian Style beers, but saw Schlafly’s Imperial Stout and Barleywine in the Ale tent. But I guess “Specialty Beer” is in the eye of the beholder.

From what I’ve been told the homebrewers were supposed to be featured in the third tent as well, but unfortunately got relegated to B-Team status due to the weather. Hopefully next year the weather will let up and people will find out just how amazing some of the homebrewers around this area are.

More Cask Beers!

The best beer of the entire festival was the cask Rye Pale Ale. So floral and wonderful, I had two or three glasses of it. I know it’s a complete pain to bring these firkins out to the festival, but I think it would be nice to showcase more Real Ale at the festival next year. It would be a nice addition to the “Specialty Beer” tent.

New Festival Beer

It’s time for a new beer.  I don’t have the taste memory to remember last year’s Dark Lager so it personally doesn’t make much sense to me to see the same beer year after year.  It’s time to have the breweries try something different and then see just how different the take on the beer is.

More Education

This festival, in my mind, is first and foremost about showing St. Louis’ brewing talent, but one of the first things I heard walking into the festival was “I’m going to get your sister loaded too!” Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some beer drinking prude that doesn’t believe beer should get you drunk. I was feeling just fine after the festival, but that wasn’t why I walked into the festival. I’d like to think there are more people interested in learning about beer and the differences in styles. Maybe included in the Friday Afternoon session (which sounded a bit light) should be a “tour guide” who walks people around talking about beer and sampling them.

Overall it’s a great event and I think it’s only going to get better as adjustments are made after years of tweaking.  I look forward to seeing how different it is in the years to come.

I’ve been a Growlers patron for probably over 5 years now. I’m proud to say that Growlers is where I really began my craft beer drinking adventure. It all began with the Royal Order of Tasters promotion that Growlers runs. I began drinking different kinds of beers and learning about all kinds of different beer styles. Beers ranging from a pale straw color to the deepest black of night.

After you’ve drank all 132 beers that Growlers has to offer you earn a pewter mug with your name on it. Granted, you never want to drink out of the mug after you earned it, but it’s yours. When you’ve finished 5 cards you’re invited to the twice-yearly menu tasting event. Growlers changes their beer menu twice a year, once in the Fall and once in the Spring. Last night they hosted the Spring menu tasting. This is always something I looked forward too, until now.

Let me begin by saying I really like Growlers, I wouldn’t be a regular there if I didn’t. But as recent changes have really cut back my patronage. Slowly but surely it seemed like the Growlers beer menu moved from interesting beers styles to pale lagers from around the world. Sure you could find a decent doppelbock or Belgian dark strong on occasion, but for the most part the were golden fizzy boring beers. Then in August came the final death knell, they removed the Buzztime/NTN trivia from both of their locations.

An establishment I used to visit once or twice a week quickly became a once or twice a month visit. I can handle drinking the same excellent beer all the time while playing trivia, but once they took that away they really took away most of my reasons for visiting. Sure the food is decent and I’m friendly with a lot of the staff, but a mediocre beer selection and no trivia meant less visiting.

So I went to last night’s tasting with a bit of hesitation. Because we were choosing beers for the Spring menu I knew this meant I would be tasting a few of lightly colored beers I disdain, I was just hoping that it wouldn’t be too many. Unfortunately my expectations were too high as approximately 16 or 17 of the 40 beers we tasted fit that definition.

I understand that it’s a spring and summer menu and that people don’t want to be drinking porters and stouts. Hell, I don’t want to be drinking those either. But just because it’s summer does that mean that every beer needs to be a yellow lager? Where were the American Wheats? Where were the American Blondes? I counted one Hefe and two Belgian Wits, but 4 Mexican beers?

It just saddens me to see a place that claims to care so much about beer put so little thought into it’s menu selection. I realize that you’re always going to need your Mexican beer and Light Lagers to keep people happy. I mean this is St. Louis after all. But when your top two selling beers are Budweiser and Bud Light why not use the other 130 beers to show off some real variety?

Coming Thursday, my thoughts on how to fix the problem.

^{_{Sorry about the crappy pictures, forgot about the camera and had to rely on the cell phone.}}

After the huge success of last year’s inaugural event, it seemed inevitable that this would be a festival that would occur for years to come. Well that’s looking to be the case as I’ve had a number of brewers confirm to me that the planning for the 2008 St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival has already begun. The tentative dates for this event look to be May 8, 9 & 10, with a VIP event on Thursday the 8th, a session on Friday evening (the 9th) and two sessions on the 10th.

I’m here to tell you that we have the people putting this event together viewing this blog so here’s your chance to tell them what you liked and disliked last year. Perhaps an idea for the Festival Beer? Or maybe a beer demonstration you’d be interested in?

My suggestion is more education. One of my favorite parts of the festival was having the beer style with the brewery name underneath it. This allowed people to learn about the style by taste without having to judge it on the brand name alone. But I’d love to see more beer discussion in the tents. While I enjoyed the beer and food cooking demonstrations, I’d love to see maybe a tasting demonstration. This would allow people to pick up the subtleties in the beer and understand what they’re tasting.

What are some of your ideas or suggestions?