2016 Zwanze Day at Jester King

This is a pretty cool idea. Do it with 1/3 of the tickets and the rest on a lottery basis. Mix the tickets up so they are not on just limited brewery only releases. Except the only way you can get a chance at the golden ticket is to buy a beer at the brewery.

 

No, no, no....JK does enough in dealing with the logistics of hosting this big event. The lottery is the simplest, easiest, fairest, best way to do it. And yes, I got shut out, but that is the luck of the draw.

 

Instead of labels, you could put a code on the bottle caps of that year's brewery only releases. Allow people to register the day Zwanze day is announced up until a month out. Any remaining tickets with a month given out in lottery.

 

Why should JK go to the expense of coding bottle caps or placing a gold ticket under labels when they more than likely dont make a large amount of money off this event, especially with half the ticket proceeds being donated? Just be thankful Texas has a Kwanze day event and hope your luck allows you a win in the lottery.

 

See below

 

Too soon

 

Lotto is the fairest and best way. But golden tickets is way more fun.

 

Attach golden tickets to cats that are let loose on the JK property, then give people a set amount of time to catch them using nothing but a q-tip, a dollar bill and a dozen uncooked eggs.

 

I guess everyone thought I was serious

 

My legit suggestion is perhaps to have a separate lottery (or just select the next 200 from the first lottery) that gets you access/tastes of some of the other Cantillon beers you will have on tap. That way you're spreading the Cantillon love around to more people. Why give 200 people access both to the Zwanze beers and unlimited pours of the other beers when you could have 400 people total experiencing at least some of the beers?

 

I can see it now, all the bottles of JK on the shelf at specs with their tops and labels removed

 

I think I agree that we're bundling the benefits too tightly -- that is, the lottery winners get everything (Zwanze, other Cantillon kegs, Cantillon bottles, etc.) I could see doing a lottery for the Zwanze keg next year, and having everything else first come, first served. I could also see maybe just having everything first come, first served. I worry about the sanity of that latter option.

This year is already set, but I could see changes along these lines for next year. What do you think?

 

I think the lottery is a fair option, especially for out of towners who need to plan a trip such as Zwanze Day; showing up at 6 AM and not even knowing if you're gonna get in would not be fun.

 

I think the lottery as it is now (winners get all) is a fair option, but maybe each time you could exclude winners from the last year or two. I don't know how difficult that would be logistically, but it would allow for more participation and the winners still win big.

 

Another option could be to have a separate lottery for Cantillon bottles. Would be more work for you and your staff, but it might end up spreading the wealth a bit so to speak.

 

What about auctioning off a small portion of the tickets (in pairs) with the proceeds going to a specific cause? It's an easy way to increase the charitable portion of Zwanze Day at Jester King.

 

Thanks for taking me seriously! To be clear I'm a fan of the lottery and a fan of the lottery winners getting some reasonable share of the goodies. My vote would be that lottery winners get one pour of Zwanze, maybe 2 pours of the other Cantillon beers on tap, and the right to buy one bottle of Cantillon beer. (I think this is how it worked at the last Zwanze Day event at JK.) If you don't like my idea of having a second lottery, I would suggest making the Cantillon beers on tap exclusive to the lottery winners for an hour (but only for their max 2 pours) and then open those taps up to anyone else. (This, I think, is consistent with what you were suggesting above.) I would consider allowing anyone to participate in the bottle share.

I think this will be OK (aka not a shite-show) because if people cannot get the once-in-a-lifetime beer (aka the Zwanze beer) or buy any bottles, I'm not sure they would line up hours in advance just for some pours (as great as the Cantillon beers are). But this would allow locals and friends of non-lottery winners an opportunity to possibly participate in some of the fun (and beers) of the event and make it that much more "open".

 

How does the second lottery work if codes are not claimed? I would think that it would be the same pool of people again. I'm on my third year losing. My good friend entered and won for the first time, but only a single ticket.

** I reread the blog entry. Good to see it stays in the same lottery pool. Good luck guys!

 

I think this is going in the right direction. A huge draw for this event is always going to be the ability to take Cantillon bottles home. I think if the lottery remains for guaranteed pours of the Zwanze keg and rights to buying bottles, you could try the remainder of kegs on first-come, first-served basis. There are exceptions of course, but a lot of people will not make the drive from out of town for a couple of pours alone.

Setting time limits on the Zwanze lottery patrons could be a headache, but limiting them to 2/3 Cantillon pours (including Zwanze) might work, as you are saying. Using tokens, marks on wristband, whatever is easiest for JK crew.

I would personally be fine with coming out there and having a couple of Cantillon on draft, along with whatever JK has on at the time. Bottles are a nice plus, but not a deal breaker for me.

 

That's a good point @OkieBooze that I hadn't thought of. And @WolfBrewer I think, like they did last year (actually earlier this year), they would only allow pours to people with wristbands and they would mark the wristbands for each pour. That would make it easy to keep it open to lottery winners for the first hour and guarantee them some pours. But if you want to open non-Zwanze taps to any and all from the get-go, that would probably be fine too. The right to get a Zwanze pour and buy a bottle of Cantillon may be enough value for the price of the tickets (it would be for me. While I don't prefer it, allowing only the lottery holders to participate in the bottle share would also add "value" to the ticket (some ridiculous beers were poured at that bottle share last year).