"10 Reasons Why The Great American Beer Festival Sucks"

I haven't had the opportunity to attend, but these seem like informed critiques. Interesting - thanks for sharing.

 

This is actually a pretty good and legitimate read. I tend to agree with a lot of what he is saying, but especially the fact that the medals mean next to nothing at this point. It doesn't even phase me anymore when some new brewery is screaming about their GABF gold medal. So what? It doesn't mean you made the best beer. It means you made a good beer this year. I'm sure it has happened, but very rarely will the same brewery win the same medal twice and that is hilarious to me. Is there a rule that a new brewery has to win each year, regardless of what the best beer actually was?

 

Interesting read. Thanks for posting.

 

Beer fests are too big and crowded and costly and I want a beer I can taste not a foamy 2 oz and did I say I hate people.

Enjoy your festival

 

Dude sure is angry for being a drunkard.

 

People trying to knock glass from your hand so they can yell "Ohhhhh!"



The event was something for the beer enthusiast way back, oh... 90's or so and prior. Now it's mainstream demographics, many of which just see it as a beer-buffet drunkfest.

 

One of the best articles I've read on BA. I've never been to any beer fest event, because I've always assumed it was a hassle, expensive, and annoying. I'm only surprised the author didn't mention hoards of pretentious hipsters and their beards.

 

Unfortunately he's gotten enough wrong that its hard to trust the rest of what he says. For example, regardless of whether a judge already has a medal for their own entry or not, the samples they judge from are done blind, not from their own brewery, and by an entire panel of judges, not by a single individual. So the type of "corruption" he points the finger at could only happen if all the judges knew which beer was being judged and were in collusion. Since the system is set up to prevent both....

As a second example he dings the convention center and costs. That's the only venue in Denver that is easily accessable to the hotels, etc. and equipped to handle an event as big as the GABF, and he clearly has no idea of how much it costs to organize and stage a show like the GABF in a convention center. Suppose, for example, you had a table and wanted be able to plug into electric power for some reason. Anybody got any idea what the costs of having the Union Electrician connect you to an outlet is? In the neighborhood of about $100 bucks (and probably North of that number). So how much do you suppose it costs to have the Union labor set up the tables, do the clean up between sessions, etc., etc. and then do the take down and final cleaning to prep for the next meeting? (Clue, you don't get to do it yourself.)

 

It's a bunch of fucktard hillbillies - IMO.

 

this one.


5.) The Shameless Money Grubbing

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Consider the GABF’s sweet, sweet deal: they not only don’t have to bring any beer to their event, the breweries actually pay them for the privilege of bringing the beer. The vast majority of their workers are unpaid volunteers. Then they have the sheer gall to charge $80 per 4.5 hour session. And if the past is any indication, the prices will continue spiraling upward until they finally overreach that golden level of gouging and the consumer lashes back. Then you can expect the GABF to announce, while patting themselves firmly on the back, that they’re going to lower their prices by some pittance, because they care.

 

Good read. Probably worth a little controversy. But that's why I'm on this site.
Thanks for sharing.

 

The author has a funny, clever style. And he or she probably has some legitimate points. The one I would disagree with -- but I know this isn't universally shared here -- is the notion of a per-ounce "value" of a beer festival. I would concede that one could -- as many traders do -- singularly buy many, many bottles of phenomenal beer to drink by oneself for the same amount of money as a festival ticket. But if that is one's singular yardstick of "value," I believe that person is missing out. I recognize that it costs money to stage festivals and I recognize there are less-expensive ways to drink beer but there are few ways to hang out with a bunch of like-minded folks in what is often a great communal experience.

And yeah ... not every festival is created equal. I skip more "craft beer" festivals than I attend.

 

I could not agree more with the article. This event would seem to attract the worst of the worst in terms of pretentious, beard wearing, hipsters, geeks, and snobs. I could buy quite a lot of good beer for $80 and not have to deal with this horrible and embarrassing segment of the community. No thanks.

 

Say what you will about pretentious hipsters [shakes fist], but you leave my beard out of this, good sir!

 

If it weren't for GABF, Denver Rare Beer would not exist...


If Denver Rare Beer did not exist, I would have to figure out something not nearly as cool to look forward to all year.

 

I thought it was a good read, I agree with the Macro Beer category rant

 

Union labor to plug in appliances? Screw that. I thought only here in NYS do we get the eh hem "benefit" of union labor for everything. What a joke.

As for beer festivals in general....I've been to a few over the course of the last five years and I probably wouldn't go again. Just not my thing. Crowded, hard to sort through the good and the bad, small samples don't let me really taste the beer, and they charge way too much. I uderstand there are costs to setup but the math just doesn't work.

I'd rather just go to my local beer shop and build a few sampler six packs and round up a few buddies and do our own taste night at someone's house. Way better and cheaper and more rewarding. IMO.

 

Nice find, it's a good read and insightful for a new person to the community like myself who may have been interested in attending. It's sad to see points like #4 and #6, the rest is really expected with any event like this. Maybe it wasn't in the past? The pictures for the points have me chuckling, lol.