Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Fest 2015

Shit really??? Damn ... guess I better get on it. Is it safe to assume the 2016 date is -> Saturday, May 28, 2016

 

Nope. Date is June 4th. The Saturday after Memorial Day.

Also, I was told by Adelaide staff that they only reserve up to a year in advance so I would have to wait a week. Wonder who @Mastashonuf talked to there.

 

They let me reserve rooms too. They said the date was tentative and they would move the reservation once the date for the festival was confirmed. I'm interested to see how that works but I'm sure they'll figure something out.

 

Thank you!

 

Everything I read about this event makes it sound like Coachella for beer. In a related note, I have never been to Coachella.

 

This was my second year.

Getting into the fest is a BREEZE. Really well organized. The breweries and beers were amazing.

Lines were far worse than last year. CCB, Alchemist, RR, FFF, Side Project, Rare Barrel were by far the worse. Normally, I'd expect other lines to be shorter with these huge lines. Didn't seem to be the case.

I witnessed the crush of people / near riot at FFF when they tapped the VBDL. I was in line at Ballast Point. It looked pretty ugly actually. Immediately after that they had an event staff person at the side of the booth.

Beyond the lines, the fest was great. The venue is great, tons of food, bathrooms, water filling stations. Plenty of room to not feel crowded or always be shoulder to shoulder with people.

I will go again next year!

 

What can I say that hasn't been said already, I thought the Shelton Brothers festival was awesome but the FWI blew it out the water.

• My biggest concerns were the long lines but even that didn't prove to be that bad since the line getting into the festival moved quickly and many of us were able to stand in a shaded area before entering the fair grounds. I did expect long lines at some of the breweries but there was so many other great breweries with shorter lines that I didn't bother me much since I was able to tick some whalez the night before at the many bottle shares. The setup was also good where lines didn't intertwine and they had a section where you could sit and watch the band play.
• The food was superb, I had a Mexican plate with chile verde and tamales with chips and guacamole, chicken wings, donuts, ribs, etc....they weren't serving Costco hot dogs or pizza [not that I don't like that stuff].
• The beers, the beers, the beers I think in a span of 45 minutes I drank, RR Beatification, Kern River Citra, Cigar City Hunahupu and Alchemist Focal Banger only to go and sit down at the brewers Q&A to listen to Vinny discuss his process to make Beat.
• The beers, I was waiting in line for the opening of the 2009 9 liter Temptation bottle at @ 2:26 with a friend, noticed there was no one in line at the New Belgium line and tried the Transalantique Kriek, it was one of the best beers I tried all day. Right before the opening of the 9 liter there was massive amounts of cutting and shoving but that was the only time I saw that.
• I stayed at Motel 6 and had a great bottle share with friends, a brewer from Knee Deep walks by joins us and hands me 1 day old Simtra, I should have saved it for today. We then walk to Adelaide I bring 2 Heady's and a Bruery stout, it was around 10pm and things were getting shut down, I crack a heady hand take a sip and give it to some dude who wanted to try it [his GF proceeds to drink it].
• The people, had conversations with many people in line and everyone was extremely nice and was fluent in Craft Beerdish. I also talked to many of the brewers and answered every question I had.
• Overall the has been the best beer fest I have attended and will try everything in my power to attend next year.

 

I asked FW about the date for next year and they said that they do not have their first meeting about it until next week, so it is not set yet.

 

Eh, I drank way better beers in much less time at Shelton Bros. By far. I spent 40 minutes just in the CC and Alchemist lines alone, didn't bother waiting for Citra or Beat because the lines looked just as long. Maybe I just had bad luck and was following crowds around. In fact, the only time I wasn't waiting in beer lines was when I grabbed food, which took all of 5 minutes which was great. Oh, yeah, I did get lucky at Founders, I ignored the line for CBS all day, walked over to get some All Day, there was no line, and all of a sudden some pitchers of CBS popped up on the table. In no time the line started forming again.

And, yeah, there was definitely no skimping on the food.

Motel 6 was rad, I'd stay there again.

I'll echo one thing mentioned up above, it blew my mind how fast they got everyone into the festival. The event staff was really well organized.

 

Whatever the date may be make sure everyone keeps up on their clicking finger exercises, cause this will surely sell out in 30 seconds next year.

 

Best part was not having to wait outside the inner gate in that hot sun. They opened that auditorium with all the brewery swag and it was nice and air conditioned.

Also...I don't know if it was just the group I was with, but Firestone made a big deal about having your name on your ticket. They stated this year they were enforcing it. Not one of us had our name checked with our ID.

Great beer. Great food. Great fest.

Already booking my cottage again for next year.

 

They also did not check to make sure your ID matched the ticket in the early admission line. They checked IDs and then a few minutes later scanned the tickets.

 

Shelton still greatest festival of all time. Don't know how the LA market wasn't capable of selling that one out. Tickets even ended up on discount sites lol

 

Shelton Brothers was an entirely different animal. I had a lot of fun and drank a lot of incredible beer at Shelton but still prefer Firestone.

 

Hmmmm - now this is a bold statement, easy tiger GO BEACH!

 

Yeah, regarding the names matching IDs I was fully expecting to have the entrance line to be insane. When we got there at 11:15am there was only a small line out front that moved very quickly, since they didn't have to match names. It was so nice not having to stand out on the street in the sun.

The requirement to match names never made sense to me to begin with. If they imposed it to prevent scalping (something that they should really consider going forward if tickets sell out sooner and more people want to try and go) that would be one thing but the fact that you could change the name on the ticket whenever you wanted it just seemed silly.

 

Hey everyone, this is my first post. I just wanted to say that as one of the food vendors, My wife and I really appreciated the crowd. It was decently hot, I was behind a bbq all day making sausage, and sometimes a rush happens and sometimes we had no food for a few minutes, and there was never any rude comments or anything. Everyone was just down to talk beer, chill for a second. We loved the festival, it was our first one, and we can't wait to go back next year. I will say one of the perks of providing food was trading food to go for bottles from all the brewers who we became friends with that day. I'm pretty excited about that as well....

 

To follow up my previous (buzzed) post I have to say that the festival was great. The beer, food and people.

In terms of the line cutting, honestly for me it wasn't an issue for me for 99% of the festival. Sure, I saw line cutters here and there but I figure that it happens and I do know there are "friends of the brewers," etc that get perks. All the others who cut, fine. No big deal.

What really irked me was that the FFF line was actually flowing really well, and quite honestly I was shocked at how fast it was moving, so a few of us decided we would cycle the line to see if we could get other variants. It wasn't until we were about 40 people behind the front where the Muerte keg kicked and there was a big cheer because everyone was looking forward to BVDL getting tapped. That's when I saw a huge rush of people go to both sides of the FFF tent. In fact, I noticed that one of the FFF guys that was pouring was almost encouraging this because he got out his phone and asked everyone to raise their glass so he could take a selfie. Meanwhile a hundred people are dutifully waiting in line to get a pour while watching line cutters walk away with two glasses of BVDL. This wasn't 2-3 people casually walking up to cut and get a pour. Honestly, it was kinda crappy watching it unfold.

One of the guys in our group flagged an event security guard and told him what was happening and initially he said he couldn't do anything about it, that it was up to the people at the tent to enforce the lines. After a few minutes that same security guard went and talked to the FFF people and that's when they started enforcing only pouring to people in line but by then it was too late. I will give props to the security guard who came back to talk to us and apologized that he should've said something earlier.

Otherwise the event was fantastic. I'd definitely try to get an early entry pass next time if I can. That way I can just hang out and not worry about chasing beers down once regular entry opens.

 

It's not a beer fest until the 3 Floyds crew act like dicks midway through or pass out at the table.

 

The FFF crew was extremely nice, awesome people. They basically spent six hours pouring beer and answering the same Dark Lord variant question over and over--and from what I saw they were polite every time. Was speaking to them after the event and they said, basically, that once BVDL was tapped, it was no rules. They didn't know what to do, didn't have the resources to control the crowd, so they just poured until it was gone. Can't blame them for the line-cutters.