BCTC Ommegang 2015

So all my friends have bailed so I'll be running solo with a cooler of beer if anyone wants to share some bottles just hit me up.

 

So, how is everyone feeling this morning?





Ha ha, trick question!

 

So sad I missed this one. Oh well I'll be there next year!

Post some pics!

 

First visit for me and a mixed bag to some degree. I'd love to hear what everyone thought and what the high and low lights were.

Low lights:
Price: VIP is just hella pricey and in retrospect not worth it for what you get (IMO of course).
The Friday night dinner and beer pairing was pretty mediocre. Food was uneven and the beers were super shelfy. There was a fried battered scotch egg that was full of inedible fat chunks, and my wife's was completely cold. Salmon sushi was excessively sweet, rabbit rilette with pop rocks (?) was gimmicky, etc. Cocktail hour had the best food, I thought. Also the band was pretty lame, played maybe 15 songs and one of them was played 3 times, and they were absurdly loud, making conversation difficult. Not sure what they were going for with that - if they want to do an upscale pairing dinner why make it into a beer hall free for all?
I went with a few friends and they brought about a dozen others, including a small contingent who absolutely yelled and screamed until about 430am Friday night/Sat morning - sorry guys. In the morning I found their empty cases of coors light...WTF? I had a hard time understanding why people like that would have even come to this event. Saturday morning I also saw someone skulling a 40 of Colt 45.
The porta potties are never pleasant but could have been worse, and they were cleaned on Saturday morning. Two of them were covered in vomit within 30 minutes of Friday night's festivities kicking off.

Highlights:
Employees and volunteers were uniformly friendly, accommodating and professional
No efforts were made to stop anyone from bringing in all the beer they wanted
Most attendees were well behaved considering how goddamn drunk most of us got

There was a substantial amount of mediocre beer offered at the tasting BUT there was also a ton of terrific beer so I certainly wasn't left wanting...in fact I had about 30 samples because the size of the pours were truly staggering...I got 5, 6, 8 oz pours...Dogfish Head filled the 10oz (?) taster nearly to the top with Noble Rot (9.0) randalled through mint and strawberries...lots of the other brewers followed suit. I actually wish they had been a little more reserved so I could have tried more (without dumping). I was super happy hanging with Captain Lawrence, Grimm, Allagash, etc...tons of top notch sour beer on offer.

All in all I probably wouldn't return. I am becoming a curmudgeonly old fuck so I don't love sleeping in tents anymore, loud drunken people, porta potties, crowds, etc. Something like EBF is more my speed - very little chaff with the wheat in terms of beers, then I go to dinner and kick back in my hotel room. I am way more beer and much less festival focused, but I'm certainly glad I got a chance to check out the madness at least once.

Next year I am going to make an effort to attend FOFA, which I haven't even attempted as of yet.

Final note: We decided to drop by the Duvel after party around midnight friday night, and that shit was hilarious. About 50 males and 2 females....a handful of guys dancing and talking to themselves, more than one wearing sunglasses. If you saw the guy with the Kim Jong Il shirt he was from our group.

 

The ever-more-expensive VIP hasn't been worth it for some time now IMO. They'd have to really do some amazing things for the VIPs to justify $275 in my book, and it sounds like they did not. We stopped going when they upped it to $225 -- at that point you're paying $125 for a beer dinner, and that particular beer dinner ain't worth anywhere near $125. Not even close. And now that dinner is $175... ridiculous.

I have it on good authority that their plan is to keep raising the price until it stops selling out, so be ready for $300 tickets in 2016.

If I didn't have so far to drive and if they'd let me set up my campsite Friday night or Saturday morning with a regular ticket I might still go, but there's no way I'm going to start setting up at noon, lugging my stuff in multiple trips across the entire property (because they won't let you drive to your campsite, even on Friday when the field is largely empty), getting all sweaty in the process, and then go right to the fest at 3. Nope.

In regards to pours, none of the breweries want to take home anything more than an empty keg, which is understandable... I have no qualms about dumping anything for any reason, there is no rule that you have to finish all or any of your samples.