Hunahpu's Day 2017

Lochnessmonster · Mar 15, 2017

NoleBeerNoleFun said: ↑

Exactly what happened as I know several people who were in line for BA Tickets and got shut out..Doug took their names and E-Mail Addresses and said he would "make good"...he did by contacting them and allowing them to buy a bottle of The F/O...while I would have loved to buy a second bottle at Festival I am happy that people who waited 4 hours + and got no tickets were allowed to buy the extras
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Yeah I was one of those people. I was curious if anyone else who picked up their bottle of Festival Only got theirs without a label? I was expecting it to have RareR Scooop plastered on it, but instead there's nothing at all with the exception of the number 44 written on the bottle cap.

Sabtos · Mar 15, 2017

Tarheel4985 said: ↑

CCB actually requested that each brewery bring two 1/6 bbl kegs of two separate brands and paid for all 4 of those kegs. It appeared that many of the breweries that kicked earlier than 1 pm only brought half of what was requested. We had the same goal as Mazurt, to not run out of beer if at all possible, so we donated an additional four 1/6 bbl kegs. But that was not required or even requested, so there was no pressure on the breweries to donate additional kegs. We just decided that if we were going to travel that far, we wanted our beers to be enjoyed by as many people as possible.

From our perspective, CCB ran one of the smoothest fests we have participated in and they went to great lengths to provide a great experience for everyone. There's really nothing CCB can do about the demand for specific beers, and not a lot the breweries can do either. It's just the nature of any festival that certain beers will be highly sought after and kick very quickly, while plenty of other great beers will be available for nearly the entire fest.
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It was pretty awesome how I could walk right up towards the end of the day and get regular Medianoche without a wait at all! That right there shows it can be done. And it was damn good!

I do have to say though, when the lines start piling up, ya gotta tell those people walking up trying to create a second line to get to the back of the original one, or no pour.

NoleBeerNoleFun · Mar 15, 2017

Lochnessmonster said: ↑

Yeah I was one of those people. I was curious if anyone else who picked up their bottle of Festival Only got theirs without a label? I was expecting it to have RareR Scooop plastered on it, but instead there's nothing at all with the exception of the number 44 written on the bottle cap.
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At BA Day it has a Label similar to all the weekdays and says F/O for Festival Only..than on the side it says Rarer Scoop...

Lochnessmonster · Mar 15, 2017

NoleBeerNoleFun said: ↑

At BA Day it has a Label similar to all the weekdays and says F/O for Festival Only..than on the side it says Rarer Scoop...
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Thanks, yeah I saw that bottle. But I picked mine up directly from the Cycle brewery. I got the email from Doug because I was one of the people standing in line for hours but didn't get a BA Day ticket. But when the bartender brought out the bottle to give it to me, it had no label at all on it. Yet it's supposed to be the RareR Scooop (I haven't opened it yet to verify).

NoleBeerNoleFun · Mar 15, 2017

Lochnessmonster said: ↑

Thanks, yeah I saw that bottle. But I picked mine up directly from the Cycle brewery. I got the email from Doug because I was one of the people standing in line for hours but didn't get a BA Day ticket. But when the bartender brought out the bottle to give it to me, it had no label at all on it. Yet it's supposed to be the RareR Scooop (I haven't opened it yet to verify).
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My guess is it might have been done that way to negate trade or resale value of the beer as I have already seen the labeled bottle put up for sale for 750 dollars..SMH

PJ_ · Mar 15, 2017

Florida guys... this is the same shit the troll brings to every single Ohio thread. Ignore him, he just needs attention.

Lochnessmonster · Mar 15, 2017

NoleBeerNoleFun said: ↑

My guess is it might have been done that way to negate trade or resale value of the beer as I have already seen the labeled bottle put up for sale for 750 dollars..SMH
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Yeah that makes sense, I probably should have checked to see if anybody else's bottle looked like that, but I was too busy trying to make sure I didn't get skipped in line when the Scooop went on tap at 5:00!

Lochnessmonster · Mar 15, 2017

PJ_ said: ↑

Florida guys... this is the same shit the troll brings to every single Ohio thread. Ignore him, he just needs attention.
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Speaking as a Floridian, I love Ohio! My Dad used to live there and I have great memories visiting him. Cheers!

yucatown · Mar 15, 2017

Lochnessmonster said: ↑

Yeah I was one of those people. I was curious if anyone else who picked up their bottle of Festival Only got theirs without a label? I was expecting it to have RareR Scooop plastered on it, but instead there's nothing at all with the exception of the number 44 written on the bottle cap.
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Mine had the Festival Only label and #2 written on the cap.

NoleBeerNoleFun · Mar 15, 2017

Lochnessmonster said: ↑

Yeah that makes sense, I probably should have checked to see if anybody else's bottle looked like that, but I was too busy trying to make sure I didn't get skipped in line when the Scooop went on tap at 5:00!
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At The Fest most of us thought The Rarer Scoop was a tad boozy/hot...of course that described our condition as well

Lochnessmonster · Mar 15, 2017

yucatown said: ↑

Mine had the Festival Only label and #2 written on the cap.
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Did you pick yours up at BA Day? Or at the brewery itself?

yucatown · Mar 15, 2017

Lochnessmonster said: ↑

Did you pick yours up at BA Day? Or at the brewery itself?
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At the brewery itself on Friday night. I was also one of the people whose names Doug took.

BravoDawg_WS · Mar 15, 2017

Sabtos said: ↑

Agreed. I'm looking forward to the survey again this year as they've still got room for improvement. If they want to have this many or more people next year, they really need a bigger venue. The tall grass, fancy bark mulch, and other more sensitive landscaping features got totally trampled by the end of the day, yet just across the street, the Lightning crew got all "get off my lawn"--kind of ironic.

Anyway, if CCB wants to keep it at Cotanchobee, they need to reduce attendance or have this over two days, which I'm sure no breweries want to do, as that might require twice the beer, which wouldn't fly with some of the breweries that were acting pretty stingy.

Especially considering the hassle to get to the line in time, and the long wait for it, (and any of the poor guys that traded dozens of top notch bottles for one MBP) agreed. Glad I had friends elsewhere that were willing to get pours out of less busy booths and bring them to me while I stood there waiting for just another BA stout.

The Funk Factory options were my favorite tastes while I ultimately waited for that Voodoo hype train in my mind to derail. Guess it's partly my fault. But I blame you all equally!

Agreed. All of the "Coffee Mate" stout options out there are starting to get tiring. I'm glad I'd already had some 3 Sons/Cycle brews previously, because that could have taken another hour out of my day teaching me the hard way that just because a bunch of flavorings are put into a beer or barrels doesn't mean it's going to be any better than a simpler take. Mazurt also falls into that category for me flavor-wise, probably because of the stunt they pulled last year with the coconut, but at least they were cool and they were still pouring beers throughout the whole day. They felt bad, for some ungodly reason, that they brought too much beer--likely because all the cool kids kicked very early. I gave the Mazurt guys major props for not limiting accessibility or trying to play into the hype game any further.

Regarding the whole festival in general, there were a couple things that definitely smoothed out the experience from last year in my opinion.

Improvements:

The Check-in

This is referring to the lines prior to the actual running-of-the-bulls style crowd corral. The initial line up, wrist check and glass pick up went relatively smoothly and swiftly compared to last year. This is a major, major improvement over last year.

Food Aaccess

This was definitely improved as well. Allowing the food truck chefs and operators to work in their 'natural habitat' created fast moving lines for some tasty stuff that hit the spot.

My complaints list may appear long, but seeing where things need improved is something I do. Huna Day 17 was by and large a lot of fun, a decent step up, and still the best run beer festival I've been to. But, they could really make it one of the best events on the planet, and not just in looking at fests exclusive to beer. Just some minor tweaks, notwithstanding the fact that they still need to maintain a strong draw for all the awesome breweries that came and have come in the past.

Complaints:

Pig Sty

I see some folks liked the Check-in process, and I agreed above, however, the subsequent concert-style mosh pit cluster was ill advised.

The first third of the corral being out in the blazing sun, with minimal if any shade for most folks, was pretty harsh. Some people were losing a lot of water over the course of two hours.

Knowing the majority of people that line up early did so for a reason, CCB essentially provided the opportunity for everyone done with the wristband check-in to cut each other by simply walking or running faster to the barrier.

Then, once the gates opened, it became clear that this was a ridiculous PR stunt that, thankfully did not, but could have gone horribly wrong. It turned into a stampede to 3 Sons, Voodoo, and J Wakefield, which were all unfortunately near each other, and were blending into each other causing further confusion and angst amongst some people.

In the end, if Shelton Bros and Three Floyds can do a single file line outside, so can CCB. It was a little embarrassing to be participating in what turned out to be raining on the Fun Run festivities. With all that space under the bridge, they could have had snaking barriers for a single file line, easy. DLD has done this many times and once a gate opens, the line moves very fast with much less risk of people trampling others. Yet I still acknowledge DLD is an overall less enjoyable fest on multiple fronts.

Hyped Brewery Spacing

As mentioned above, many of the big breweries being clustered together turned into a mess. I thought that lesson was learned a long time ago. It seems like some random thing like this always gets missed on an obvious checklist.

Double Lines

A couple of booths, like J Wakefield and WeldWerks, did not enforce any kind of organization, and as such allowed multiple unassociated people to walk up and get pours simultaneously. This ultimately created double lines branching in two different directions, cutting off other booths in two directions in stead of one. This in turn caused lines for in demand breweries to take twice as long to inch forward.

On at least one occasion, someone noticed this was occurring, and saw that the second line was shorter than the one we were in. They grabbed all the glasses of those of us in their vicinity, got in the shorter line that was a good 50 yards away, and came back to us with the beer we were waiting for. That was awesome, but...it was also ridiculous that any of that it was permitted in the first place.

Missing Beers

As others have mentioned, some breweries did not bring the beers they previously stated they were. One brewery had a long-time Want of mine listed, and they also did not even have a line for the first 1.5 hours. That was going to be my first drink, but they didn't end up bringing it. They brought a really awesome consolation prize, but I'd already had it before and wasn't anticipating it in the same way.

Unannounced Timed Tappings

WeldWerks listed when they were tapping brews and that was awesome, but it wasn't really a public feature of the festival, or announced beforehand. Even for those breweries that listed their tap times, failing to provide these before the festival doesn't do anything to reduce demand or make lines more efficient. If all guest beers were available at all times it would have likely prevented some lines from swelling as much, because shortly after people realized a booth wasn't pouring something they wanted, they went to the back of the most massive lines thinking that was a good sign. For some people, they ended up spending their time in two locations and getting shut out of their desired beers at both.

Overselling

Already mentioned.

Tampa Overall - there is not much CCB can do about this, or is there? But I can't be the only one thinking this:

Tampa Beer Week in general is already a minor attraction, and capping it off with Huna Day just makes it a marquee. However, there is a lot going on in Tampa, and I'm sure someone from the area might have inside knowledge as to why they're trying to cram everything into this period, but I can't believe it's considered to be okay to plan all of these events on the same week. It definitely showed on the highway that the city was buckling, but at least the city remained functional, so props to that. But I mean in Cleveland we had a Bieber concert and two sports games on the same day and it basically shut downtown off from anyone trying to get in for the evening. Although Tampa seems to be able to handle this better, surely they don't want it to get that bad.

On top of MLB spring training, you've got these beer events everywhere that are becoming more and more popular, an actual full scale music fest, this Fun Run we totally and rudely interrupted, the Grand Prix, Spring Break (ffs), and whatever else I missed. I mean really!? It's a bit much, no? lol!!

All of this pulling in people from around the world certainly makes everything everywhere packed. No matter where you try to turn for even a second of peace, including many of the beaches, you are bombarded with humanity!

In any case, as far as CCB actual, they really seemed to downplay their presence at the fest this year. It's not a complaint, but their trailer was almost shy, like it was hidden, yet they had some unique, tasty brews--many once in a lifetime tastes, for those of us that don't live there. I forgot to seek them out until later in the day because they were so sporadically interspersed, with their main trailer being in a weird corner. Staying at a hotel by the brewery definitely made up for it, (Trousseau especially knocked my socks off for a barleywine--really complex and delicious), but I still enjoy having a few beers from the actual brewery at the fest.

Anyway, enough of the pluses and minuses, onto the awards, and other TBBW, non-Huna day related stuff.

I figured I'd save this for the end, as only certain people will have had the patience to last this long:

I am really, really, curious about this. Is everyone okay with this? You can't tell me everyone here on BEER ADVOCATE is happy or even just fine with a MEADERY winning best BEER AND BREWERY. LMFAO...FLORIDA! What else will you bring us? I get it, in warmer climes, lighter, brighter beverages are preferred. But this is why the Florida consumer still comes off as so confused about whether they like actual beer, or just cocktail- and milkshake- flavored beverages. With the huge popularity and footprint of flavored Berliners (which I loved, don't get me wrong), and all the bourbon barrel stouts with all the added flavorings just exploding in that scene, there's not much room left to argue about best actual brewing of actual beer. Sure a better base makes for a better finished product, but there's a ridiculous amount of masking going on with some of these beers.

I mean, are you, or anyone else, under the impression that HONEY WINE is the same as beer, and should be judged as such? Come on. It should automatically by excluded from the vote for best beers at a beer festival. I mean they're not even able to be added here on BA, if that says anything at all to you.

I'm just glad I left to pick up my bottles before they started announcing that because I would have been making some noise about that silliness. Mead has almost nothing in common with beer, and Garagiste doesn't even offer any beer, at all. Give me a break. Good for them for producing a tasty, adult peanut butter and jelly, though.

This leads me to my next question: Who votes, anyway? I really want to know. I spoke with at least 30 people while standing in lines with them, chatting over tapas, or swapping beers and taking notes, whatever. None of them voted or were even planning to. Few of them even knew about it. Most were there simply to enjoy the fest, not even caring about specific beers. It seems to me over the years these votes have leaned heavily local, and I'd hazard a guess that they mostly rely on local industry vets and patrons of these small businesses that are hoping for that shot of notoriety by "winning" at a big name event. A "competition" that really is a very minor side attraction to this event. I wonder how many votes there actually were, really. It's still odd the full list isn't out yet. I thought I remembered seeing pictures relatively soon after last year.

Agreed. We stood patiently in line for two hours and missed on everything, partly due to not wanting to cut, while watching others actually cut. If they're going to tap everything essentially on the street and actually tell everyone they're doing it, they need a better way. It's unfortunate that you can't simply taste a weekday beer when you strike on a bottle too. Was there for Friday at 9AM and was only a few people shy.

Anyway, all the Berliners--at the fest, St. Pete, and elsewhere--sure were fun and refreshing. I saw someone mention elsewhere that Ecto was done with Arkane. From what I understand, last year's CCB Taste the Rainbow was as well, and calling it Skittles is a way of trying to separate it from Arkane. Regardless, this just serves to mention that Arkane had some fucking amazing sours, from the mango hanabero Gimme Swelter, which was a bit too sweet for me and not spicy but with a nice little kick, to the black currant Disco Bloodbath saison, which I had later at their place. That blew me away. As a sidenote, it's not as though any of the traders in Florida can't already get it at their whim, but it was very similar to Arial Rubicite if that means anything to you. Not quite on that same level, but also not far off. Big compliment indeed.
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Dude you need to have sex. SRS

Lochnessmonster · Mar 15, 2017

yucatown said: ↑

At the brewery itself on Friday night. I was also one of the people whose names Doug took.
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Weird. I wonder why mine didn't get a label. Alright thanks for the info!

EABbGD · Mar 15, 2017

Lochnessmonster said: ↑

Weird. I wonder why mine didn't get a label. Alright thanks for the info!
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FYI picked my bottle up at the brewery and it had a label. A friend I was with got a no label bottle and immediately exchanged it for one with a label should he ever want to trade it.

Lorianneb · Mar 15, 2017

This was our first Huna fest, but we have been to the GABF twice and to countless smaller fests. This was a very well run fest. 4,000 people entering was smooth and fast. Thunder alley worked well and nobody was a douche running and pushing. The lines were spread out for the most part. Bottle pickup was equally smooth. Great job CCB

Lochnessmonster · Mar 15, 2017

EABbGD said: ↑

FYI picked my bottle up at the brewery and it had a label. A friend I was with got a no label bottle and immediately exchanged it for one with a label should he ever want to trade it.
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I appreciate the info! I actually emailed Cycle, and they quickly responded saying that some bottles did go out without labels attached. In the chaos at the time, it didn't even occur to me that it wasn't supposed to come that way. Wish I didn't live 4 hours from Tampa, I'd love to get a label slapped on there. Right now it looks like a bomber sized version of Westy 12 haha!

yucatown · Mar 15, 2017

Lochnessmonster said: ↑

I appreciate the info! I actually emailed Cycle, and they quickly responded saying that some bottles did go out without labels attached. In the chaos at the time, it didn't even occur to me that it wasn't supposed to come that way. Wish I didn't live 4 hours from Tampa, I'd love to get a label slapped on there. Right now it looks like a bomber sized version of Westy 12 haha!
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Consider it a rare RareR Scooop

mxracercam · Mar 15, 2017

CraftBeerLos said: ↑

No one has sour grapes about yesterday, like I stated , I had a great first experience. Everything was excellent with exception of this "VIP" area that people brought all their buddies into. Regardless, I had a great time. No festival is perfect and there is nothing wrong with voicing concerns/feedback.
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As has been said. these were mostly the other breweries and volunteers, who after getting setup probably had a few minutes to go grab a beer before being trapped behind a jockey box for the next few hours. Fuck them, right?

CraftBeerLos · Mar 16, 2017

mxracercam said: ↑

As has been said. these were mostly the other breweries and volunteers, who after getting setup probably had a few minutes to go grab a beer before being trapped behind a jockey box for the next few hours. Fuck them, right?
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Volunteers had appropriate shirts and brewery employees did as well for most part. I could certainly tell the difference. Either way, I've said my peace and moved on. I enjoyed myself overall! Cheers!

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