FOBAB 2015

was my first FOBAB, was there for Friday and Sat afternoon. Thought it was a great time and enjoyed all the great beers and good people. Only annoying thing on Friday was the guy in the squirrel suits tail kept hitting me lol.

 

Reason #1001 to love FOBAB: if you volunteered and then attended the volunteer party on Sunday, you get to leave with LOTS of growlers and bottles of leftover beer. Yeah...we have a mini-FOBAB going on tonight with some medal winners too!

 

Reason #1002 to hate fobab. Working two sessions becuase of a lack of voulenteers and then there being no information or mention of this from any of the festival bosses.

 

Ouch.

 

hahaha wait. so first they don't buy the beer from the breweries (it's all donated.. $0 of your $60 ticket goes to the brewery) and then they give all of it away after the fest?

yiiiiikes ILBG. just yikes.

 

Don't forget about the part where you brag about how much money you made to anyone who will listen.

 

And for some reason, they still can't afford to/won't pay for/don't care enough to provide an app with an interactive map showing locations of beers and "secret rooms", much less a basic map or alphabetical brewery index at the back of their mostly worthless printed program.

That said, great beers and traffic flow inside seemed good this year. Lines moved pretty fast and the water coolers were genius.

 

I signed up to volunteer and I totally would have done it if they didn't wait until after tickets went on sale to tell me I had been picked to volunteer. They wanted me to do the later session on Saturday, but I had tickets for the early session and I wasn't going to A) volunteer after drinking and B) bail on my wife who was at the early session with me. So, I told them I was sorry but I couldn't volunteer. They still ended up putting me on the list of volunteers.

Moral of the story, they need to announce volunteers before tickets go on sale.

 

Seems like they need to sit down and figure out how to better organize the thing from the top down really.

I'd be curious how the Bassett certification requirement hurt their volunteer numbers this year. I know that's a legal thing and there isn't really anything they can do about it.. just curious how or if it impacted. Would have to think it did in a big way.

Brewers gotta get paid for that beer if the event is bringing in as much money as they say it is. I don't think anyone is advocating that the ILBG needs to pay full price for the kegs, but some token of gratitude based on the profit isn't unreasonable imho. The beer is why we all show up, keep the folks making it happy?

The ticket thing continues to be an annual trainwreck. Some folks adamant that they're going to take one, others don't care. That needs to be base lined. If that means the ILBG needs to put resources into getting the stupid law changed, they should do it.

No excuse to run out of glassware/programs. I understand some folks took extras. They should have extras.

They've still got a long way to go with making use of the floor space. I'd like to see them add more rooms if possible. Also, while I love the hell out of the fact that Goose had all of that beer there..... That's valuable floor space imho. Maybe move that GI stuff into a separate room.

I dunno. lot of ideas. Definitely room for improvement with the event.

 

Its kind of funny to hear all the people complaining about the program. (In my best Allen Iverson voice) The program. Your complaining about the program. There were 363 world class beers all in one location and all people are talking about is the program. I love BA!

 

The bassett cert was not a requirement. I was assigned to pour with out one.

 

I understand not having an APP those can be very expensive to develop for something that only happens once a year. But a agree a printed map is needed.

 

FTFY

Errr.... It was supposed to be. You're supposedly not allowed to pour beer in Cook County without it. So... Chalk that up to another organizational issue. hah

 

The tickets work fine IMO. Illinois requires it. So you have two options. Ensure they are taken but provide more than anyone could drink. Or just accept that some will take them, some wont and in the end does it really matter?

 

To me? No it doesn't really matter. I would think the festival organizers might care though. They're on the hook for whatever fines come as a result from violation, which was ultimately my point. If they're not going to enforce it, they should try (and maybe they are?) to work to get that law changed.

That's probably a bit bigger picture than FoBAB specifically, but.. *shrug*

 

it goes to the Illinois Guild. These brewers are happy to donate beer to a cause that benefits them.

its also an opportunity for exposure some of these brewers would never get otherwise and a chance to be rewarded with a medal that people respect nationally

 

Same thing happen to me. It wasn't hard to get rid of tickets early on. But yes, i do agree. For planning sake, getting a head start on volunteers would make things a lot easier. Need to maybe advertise the benefits of volunteering a bit more though. No excuse for being short on workers for an event like this.

 

the goose island was stationed perfectly. It didn't block any entrances and moved quickly. Thats all you can ask for. Sorry, shunning goose island because they are popular isn't an option.

 

It only benefits the breweries in IL, and only member breweries at that. There's no reason why everyone should be expected to donate beer to this festival. I've seen a few breweries (in IL and members of the guild) publicly stating they aren't fond of having to donate this stuff. So..... no, I don't think brewers are necessarily happy to donate the beer. ingredients aren't cheap. barrels even less so.

Whoa whoa whoa... Who said anything about shunning Goose? Don't put words in my mouth. The floor between the aisles was packed tight. The goose line was packed tight. All I'm saying is that there might be a better way to do it.

 

The GI booths had a line running down the middle of one of the aisles Friday night, which really made getting to beers in that aisle a pain. I get what they were trying to do with showing the options to both when you got in line, but they should have reversed the setup so that the booths were where that sign post was and the lines ran along the walls.