VT HopJam 2016

That was me, we ended up grabbing Heady and Focal and then climbed to the summit of mansfield. No regrets.

 

Pretty much their entire social media footprint after August 16th is gone. Very interesting.

But then again, this is kinda a reflection of the shit show that is craft beer and hoppy beers right now.

 

The shit show that is craft beer and hoppy beers right now? I suppose that depends on the your point of view, but I don't think it's anywhere close to being that negative of an experience...

 

The obsession with lines, trading, waiting, hoarding. So yes, I stand by the comment. It's pretty nuts at this time. Big reason why HopJam 2014 was much different.

 

With a day to digest everything and reflect on the event itself, here’s my comprehensive breakdown of Hop Jam 2016.

TL;DR - Great food, music, and (mostly) great people made the “Jam” a good time. Poor planning, overselling BIP, and percentage of entitled beer douchebags ruined the “Hop” portion of the event.

Much of this has already been said, so apologies for rehashing it, but whatever.

Before I start, I need to take a second and commend the volunteers at this event. They were in the sun all day, dealing with entitled assholes, and they busted their ass to get everyone beer as fast as it could be poured. I recognized quite a few of them from last year, and I’m sorry that they had to deal with the shitshow from the other side of the table without drinking anything themselves. I’m sure it wasn’t fun for them, and I apologize for everyone who yelled at them or treated them poorly.

Also, the music was fantastic, as was the location change. More flat ground this year to hang out and watch the bands, shade under some big trees, and if this was purely a “jam” event I would have been happy to spend $30 for a ticket.

Lastly, the food was good, albeit expensive ($6 per taco or slice of pizza), and the best bang for the buck (as always) was Ting Ting’s dumplings. Love those suckers.

Ok, now onto the problems - and there were a TON.

BIP Tickets: These were criminally over-sold. There were 500+ people in line before 11am “early entry” and when technical difficulties hit (scanners overheated) it was catastrophic. The end of the BIP line didn’t enter the fest until 11:50 or later, only minutes before the GA tickets were allowed in.

This over-selling caused massive lines in BIP, overcrowding, and led to many BIP’s (myself included) simply ignoring the BIP section & potential access to special beers altogether.

Also regarding tickets - anyone who arrived without one could walk right up to the Ticket Sales booth, buy a BIP ticket and walk right in past the entire line of schmucks who already had tickets in hand. Saw at least 6 people do this.

Beer Lines: Last year there were 6-8 pouring stations, each with 2 beers on tap. Stations pouring the whalez (Good Morning, Headroom, etc…) had long lines, but if you just wanted a quick beer and weren’t picky, there was literally zero line for most others. This year, I assume in an effort to stop last year’s line cutting and “hovering” near the taps waiting for something special to go on, there were only 2 pouring stations - one for BIP, the other for GA+BIP. Didn’t matter if you wanted a Citizen Cider or Very Hazy, you were waiting in the same damn line. Until the crowd started thinning out around 4-5pm, the shortest wait was minimum 15 minutes, and the longest over half an hour.

Beer Availability: With limited volumes of the highly sought after beers, you had to get lucky and be in the front of the line when something got tapped, and even then you had to hope people didn’t order 2-3 at a time (how was this allowed?). Beers got tapped and kicked before people halfway down the line even got to the front. Crazy.

Similar to last year, it seemed like nothing good was held back - it all went on early and in quick succession. By the time we left around 7pm, the same 8-10 beers had been available for half an hour because no one was buying them. These were all shelf beers and I couldn’t justify using a $6 beer ticket on something I can buy a sixpack of down the street for $9. No idea if anything special got tapped after 7pm, but I doubt it.

Also, despite appearances, the BIP section DID in fact get all the rar walez that were promised on the beer list posted earlier last week. I saw some complaints on Twitter saying “GA got Headroom and BIP got shut out” but that was simply wrong.

Beer Entitlement: Where to start with this one. While most of the people there were awesome, there were far too many who were tremendous assholes.

First cup of the day, I got to see a very large manchild yell at the volunteers pouring his beer because someone who was in line behind him got their fill before he did. The volunteer handled it well, but that level of entitlement was prevalent throughout the day.

Line jumping was also an issue. There was an “exit row” for people leaving the beer tent with full cups, and quite a few people used this as a path to walk right up to the bar without waiting in those pesky lines like a sucker. The volunteers didn’t notice (or care?) and would pour them just like everyone else. There were also BIP’s who would hop the fence between the two lines and get right in the front of the GA beer line when something good was tapped. Heard one of them say something like “I paid good money for BIP and its bullshit that GA gets Headroom when I missed it in BIP”. Seriously, fuck that guy.

But by far the biggest beer entitlement issue was the “hovering”. General line etiquette no matter where you are or what you’re doing - when you get to the front of a line, make your purchase and move along, right? Welp, I guess that doesn’t apply to those special douchebags who decided to fuck over everyone else who was following general rules of society. Solid group of 15-30 simply parked themselves at the front of the beer line right next to the bar; allowing the line to pass by them until something special got tapped (Headroom, Green, etc…) and then they would jump the line to ensure they got their pours. The organizers were well aware of this and did nothing to prevent it. But hey, good on those guys for getting Very Hazy, Headroom, DDH Fort Point, and all the other awesome beers they wanted, while the vast majority of attendees got exactly zero. I hope they had horrible hangovers yesterday.

Fixing this year’s issues shouldn’t be too big of a challenge. 1) Limit BIP tickets to a reasonable number. Literally ANY limit would be better than this year. Make BIP actually have some value of exclusivity, rather than just including a t-shirt and drink tickets. 2) Enforce proper line etiquette. Park a volunteer at the front of each line to prevent line jumping, hovering, etc. 3) Add more pouring stations. Self-explanatory. 4) Have a “Whalez” tent off to the side somewhere. If people want to wait an hour for a pour of something special, let them have at it. No reason why getting a Long Trail IPA or Citizen Cider should take just as long as Very Hazy. I’m sure there are other great ideas out there, and I hope Meg’s Events can improve upon this for next year, but we will not be returning no matter what they do. Too many other breweries and beer events worthy of my money.

Cheers, and thanks for reading!

 

Yes, pretty much everything RuckIt said. And check-in.....start that early. Don't try to check in hundreds of people in 15 minutes. Start a couple hours early. Check ID's, scan tickets, and when done, give the peeps a wristband. Then when you walk in, you show it to the person at the gate/tent. No wrist band? Then you cut the line or missed a step in the check-in process. This is how BA does their events and it works brilliant. I can say that standing outside the place in the BIP line 45 minutes after I should have been inside really made me have zero interest in buying a 50/50 raffle ticket when those people could have been helping get us inside where we would have been happier and I would have bought one.

 

I agree with most everything said here. And now I'm going to rant, because this seems like the place to do it. First of all, I've been drinking longer than some of those "entitled douche bags" have been alive, and so a special 'Fuck You' goes out to them.
I have been to MANY fests, all run by different organizers, and this was by far the absolute worst run shit-show I've ever seen. Every decision they made flies in the face of common sense.
The reason I made the trek north, was to drink some beers I normally don't have access to. Since I'm not a 'whale hunter', (it's only beer, people) my thought process was "let the VTers wait in line for trillium, tree house, etc. while I get some Lawson's, hill farmstead, etc.
Oops. So much for that idea. Despite the huge problems, I still had a fun day. Glad I didn't shell out for BIP.
Highlights of the day were the dumpings and coming from Boston, $6 a beer is still a pretty sweet deal.
Will NOT be returning, however.

 

Did anyone wonder why they didn't consolidate the parking lots behind the beer trucks and put the beer tents in that lower parking lot? Neither of those lots were even close to half full and would have provided way more space for lines and tents.

 

A group of us bought our tickets months ago and traveled up from Florida. This one made the very bad Hunahpu Day we had a few years ago look like Harvard put it on. This Hop Jam was easily the worst organized and most poorly executed beer fest I or anyone I know have ever been to in our many years of organized inebriation. Here is the thing: MOST of the problems could have been avoided by giving each brewery it's own booth. And it appeared they had room to do this. What Einstein thought up a single line and then putting the signs listing the beers at waist level.....by the time you waited an hour, yes an hour, you discovered to your horror that the best beer available was an Allagash you can buy at any local convenience store for half the price. We got 4 mediocre beers in 4 hours. And we were BIP. Actually at one point, the GA line had SOS and some other tasty beers while the BIP line was trying to sell you Citizen Cider and some beers no one wanted. We were amazed. We heard both Alchemist and Lawson's said fuggeddaboutit once they saw the disaster unfolding. Food was great, music was really good. Beers outside of a few good ones (Very Hazy and Green saved the day for me) were meh. And the ultimate slap is they took down all the Facebook posts. I don't think they will be able to stop the information from getting out about this disaster, just like Cigar City could not stop the video we all saw. They should call CCB cuz the last Huna Day was very well run, they could learn a lot from them. I cannot recommend attending this beer fest and I really was hoping it would be great. We will not return without a complete re-do with separated booths for each brewer and better security to stop the line cutting/hovering. Cheers.

 

So to sum this all up, ya'll kinda got ripped off.

I do feel bad, especially for anyone who is disappointed. That's worse then angry since you are trying to have a good attitude about it.

 

well i hate to hear about someone coming up from florida for that show. if you'd like, send me a message in mid october when the weather isn't so hot and I'll ship you some Vermont beer.

 

Baller dude right here.

 

I was (am?) angry at those who abused the broken system to their benefit (hoverers, cutters, etc..) but truly disappointed about the fest in general. Last year I was there for the full 11 hours and had an absolute blast. Such a 180 compared to this weekend, and unfortunately lots of people left early and missed some great bands because of it.

 

It's a shame that they scrubbed their Facebook instead of issuing a simple apology, or a quick statement about what went wrong.

 

they're probably in a country that doesn't extradite to the United States

 

I appreciate the offer and will be in touch. Love Vermont people I have met over the years. You guys are some of the friendliest. Cheers.

 

Thought this was a good recap. My one additional suggestion for improvement.. I love what treehouse does for their anniversary events... Whole bunch of quality choices you get as many as you want, but a few special colored tix everyone is guaranteed a pour of one or two or three whalez/limited. You don't need to crowd or wait in long line, you will get that pour you want eventually which is all I wanted to know after missing three tappings of Headroom, seeing one person after another walk off with two full pours And always missing out by the time I made it to front. And why not half pours of the crazy limited ones?

 

Exactly how I felt and what I called it - a shit show. Stood in line for eons for one beer? (We saw people grabbing 2, so we quickly followed suit) I felt SO bad for the pourers and the BIP people. So really - what'd you get out of it that we didn't? ... a t-shirt, lanyard, coozie and food & drink included? BFD! I would be PISSED! Only thing I enjoyed was meeting people who were just as pissed off as I was - great bonding experience. This was advertised more toward the beer side of it as a beer fest. This is definitely NOT a beer fest. This was a music fest that happened to have craft beer that you queue up in one bloody line to get with limited choices of whatever 6-8 they tapped at the moment. It should be advertised as such otherwise, it's just misleading people and then THIS happens! They're fixing bugs? Didn't people bitch about this same thing last year? I will not be spending my hard-earned money on this shit show next year. W O W

 

Can understand the hesitance of many who went this year to the event not wanting to go next year. Maybe next year would be the best, if the company running this listens! They could easily fix the above mentioned problems, plus the # of people stating will NOT go next year could also diminish the volume of craft drinkers making quicker shorter more efficient lines. SO, maybe next year is the year to go!?

 

Please see my prior posts in this thread. Many of the same problems were identified last year and seemed to only get worse this year. Unfortunately this event, which has a lot of potential, is really trending in the wrong direction.