FOBAB 2016

I agree. I didn't get anything in that area all evening besides Hipster and Hazel's Nuts the one time I braved the crowd. Too many people lingering in that area stopped all movement a number of times.

It isn't all bad, I spent a lot more time in the sour room and with the brett and pale beers.

 

This is why I love to voulenteer. Ice Crew. Didnt have anything to really do the first hour during early entry. Tried every big stout I wanted too. Just chilled and drank sours on Saturday. The perfect FOBAB strategy.

 

Went Saturday early and would renew my Imbibe based on what I felt was a great value. Hit every beer I really wanted in that hour and none kicked until after 1. I waited 45 minutes for Prop 14 which was too long (though it was probably good for my sobriety)

 

My third FoBAB, with a strategy to start small and work up, which generally worked well. Last year, my drink-mates didn’t like sours, so we hit the big stuff first and could barely stagger out. This time, I think I could have spent the full time with the experimental stuff and the sours. Lots of off-the-wall stuff, much of it good.

I’d done Saturday PM previously, last year drinking out of a plastic cup, as they’d run out of sampler glasses. Switched to Friday this time. Agree that it seemed considerably more crowded, especially in the middle aisles. And, yeah, the Goose line was ridiculous. I did like the dimmer lighting, which helped it seem less like trade show.

Nobody’s mentioned it, but, damn, the music was loud. My ears were still ringing two days later. I don’t remember having to yell at the pourers that strongly before. Maybe that was just Friday?

Overall, though, a great time!

 

My biggest takeaway was the female emcee that could not read and basically mispronounced nearly every brewery/beer when announcing the results.

 

Maybe she was just hammered?

 

Not to get all bleeding heart, but I thought it was pretty cool there were two women up there running the show in what is generally a male-dominated environment.

On a different topic nobody mentioned the rampant line-jumping in the endless GI line, though I'm not sure if it's truly line-jumping when neither the jumper or the jumpee are sober enough to realize it's happening.

 

If you can't pronounce Dosvidanya get back in the kitchen where you belong!

 

I feel like there's a topical "state of US relations with Russia" joke hidden in there, too.

 

On a different topic nobody mentioned the rampant line-jumping in the endless GI line, though I'm not sure if it's truly line-jumping when neither the jumper or the jumpee are sober enough to realize it's happening.[/QUOTE]
I hate line-jumpers as much as the next guy, but I can't even count the number of times I had to "honk the horn" because the tickers had their noses in their phones.

 

This is another thing the two booths - with more corrals - helped with...

That said, it's also hard to distinguish line jumping from people tag-teaming to get line beers. Which exacerbates that lack of attention brought on by limited sobriety...

 

Great event, had a fantastic time as usual. Few things, crowded as usual, the middle of the floor is impossible to move in.

It was really dark in there, don't remember them having it so dark in previous years at the UIC.

Really missed the two Goose Island stations, that line was horrible. Didn't like the timed releases either.

The women's bathroom in back getting commandeered in the Sat AM session by guys was pretty funny, sorry to the women though.

 

Timed releases are a terrible idea, in my opinion. You run into multiple issues:

1) Much larger lines during certain times based on the beer that's on tap (as opposed to an evenly-distributed line all night)

2) People trying to "game" the system by getting in line before something is put on tap and stalling/giving up their spot in line multiple times to delay getting to the front/people who loiter around in front, waiting for what they want to be tapped.

3) People's schedules at an event getting messed up, because now they have to get there at X time for Y tapping.

I'm sure they had a reason for what they did (more beers on tap overall, maybe?), but when I saw that announced on social media, I was glad not to be there for it. I've been to one of their summer events when they did staggered tappings, and that didn't turn out well, either.

 

Article from Josh Noel at the Tribune on this year's FOBAB:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/dinin...-beer-festival-highlights-20161114-story.html

 

Great article. Thanks for posting. I guess Fobab can make a brewery.

They need to start putting the city the breweries are located in on the boards or in the pamphlets. There were so many new breweries I haven't heard of and I have no idea where they are from.

 

Hell yeah, FoBAB blew Spiteful up last year. Chicago beer nerds are pretty cultish about local breweries, so as long as there are events like FoBAB (where they don't need to choose between buying a BAMCC or some other more well-known BA stout), local breweries will continue to blow up by getting an award or two.

I would imagine this is Dosvidanya's (Destihl) year; after taking best of show last year, and getting best strong stout or whatever this year, I'd imagine people are really taking note (now I gotta try Rye!).

 

It's almost like you WERE there! There were definitely some of those shitbirds in the Goose line. They actually deformed the queue at one point while waiting for whatever.

 

Some of them? There were a ton of them. At one point the line was just standing still waiting for the next tap. All that was left from the prior tapping was Halia or something along the sour sisters line and nobody was going to get it. I felt like a change of pace, so asked the security dude looking for cutters if I could just walk right up without having to mess with the line at all.

 

I was honestly hoping I'd be wrong about FoBAB; this was based mostly on what I've seen at GI's Sunday Funday, and general cynicism. That sucks that people actually were just standing around (although I definitely don't entirely put the blame on them).

Either way, hope this is something GI fixes next year. I liked last year's setup, where one side (I think) had BCS and the other had the sours and whatnot. No one going up to get Halia should have to wait in like for 40 minutes (and I really like Halia).

 

I would definitely like to see Goose go back to the 2 booths and do away with the timed tappings. I'm all for them using Twitter to announce special tappings, but I think they should do it at random times throughout the fest. With that said, in some ways the timed tappings worked, as if you wanted a specific beer, you could easily hop in line and wait it out. Our gameplan was to have one person hold line while the others could go an sample during the 30+ minute wait. I will say that I enjoyed more of GI's offerings last year due to the setup and came away impressed with how they ran things. This year, I got to try Prop 2014 and the Templeton Rye, but was less enthusiastic about having to spend so much time to do so.

And while this may open up an ugly can of worms, I will offer this up for conversation. Maybe they need to use the tickets/stamps for some of the rarer draws of the fest and only allow a single, good-sized pour per patron. And maybe there should be a little more insistence on breweries bringing enough beer to at least last halfway through the fest. Maybe the rationing and less fear of FOMO would result in less crowding/pushing and less lining up for beer and more people moving and potentially trying different beers.

Otherwise, short of a higher ticket price and fewer tickets, a larger space, a different configuration of the booths is likely necessary so that people can stop and enjoy more than one offering in an area without clogging up an entire area.

In some ways I'm glad I wasn't too hung up on missing certain beers and tried more of the sour/ale offerings, but there are certainly many beers that I wish I would have tried, but just didn't feel like dealing with the crowding and pushing.