Hunapocolypse 2014

Completely off topic, but that has jack shit to do with The South. Florida might as well have broken off from New York and floated down here, given the current population.

 

Personally, I thought 2012 was a disaster, and thats the year everyone raved about. I cant even imagine how this year's was to get such backlash.

 

2012 was crowded, but manageable. 2013 was miserable. And well, 2014 was 2014.

 

^This.

This event sounded horrible (saw that youtube clip)... it makes the BT online purguatory seem like a brisk stroll through the park.

 

After a few days to soak it in, here are my thoughts on Hunapocalypse.

We arrived at 1030 and made it through the gates in a matter of minutes. I spotted the Teku glasses for sale and mostly by happenstance learned about the Catador bottles. Theres a lot of butthurt about the Catador brews being sold, but in this case I think CCB made the right decision. El Catador 1.0 was over and we all knew it. We also suspected that there would be leftovers. There were several hundred to a few thousand bottles left. A huge number of folks got them and none of us expected them. It was a nice extra and I can see how some would be miffed if they didnt get one. That said, it was never an expectation or a promise.

I was told the Eventbrite system 1) oversold the event and 2) could identify an authentic ticket from a fake but not if a ticket has been used already. If this is true it would mean anyone with a photocopier could get in the door. If either of these is true thats 100% on CCB and they should own up to that boneheaded oversight. At any other business someone would be out of a job.

The queue to get through the door was absurd. Not enough people working the gates. Dozens of people snuck in from the side street/line by crossing the guardrail and entering behind the semi-truck. The MBA in me is screaming for CCB to reach out to USF and get some operations management and process modeling help. There are Grad students that will do the work for free and CCB would be better off for it in my humble opinion.

Selling additional tasting glasses was an error in hindsight. People were double and triple fisting at the taps. We were told this wouldnt happen but invariably it did. See Double Barrel Hunahpoopoo for an example.

My group got our allotment of 3 each and I really wanted a few more but I'll live. I had serious safety concerns at the bottle pickup location. Those purchasing bottles should have been allowed to exit through the back of the warehouse. Tensions were way too high to have them return through the crowd.

Lastly, I love that CCB is pet friendly. I'm a dog owner and animal lover, but dont bring your fricking dog to Hunahpu Day. The crowd is already too large and the last thing I need is to be tied up in the leash.

All said, it didnt go as planned. It was a monumental clusterf#$%. I hope the 3 Floyds and whatnot of the world are taking notes.

I always try to find a silver lining in things and in this case I must say that I'm left with one distinct impression. As a South Florida beer guy I've always felt like the Florida beer scene is dismissed to some degree. After this weekend there is no question that Tampa and indeed Florida has arrived on the beer scene. All of the major events were packed with people from around the country. Hunahpu Day wasnt pretty but lets not lose sight of the fact that CCB is a major part of the massive explosion of craft beer in Florida.

I'm still a CCB fanboy and a proud Catador. Nobody bats a thousand and I'll happily give CCB a mulligan. I have little doubt that next year will be markedly better than this year.

Cheers...

 

A mulligan, indeed. Tee it up and take another whack, JR.
And to think I was disappointed in not being able to buy a ticket online at the original sale. I guess I was lucky. That would have been no place for me. Physically or otherwise.
I just looked in my fridge, and it has ready for this week: Cubano Espresso, Invasion, and Jose Marti. Good stuff, and I will continue to enjoy the brews of CCB. I believe they are good people. We all know they screwed up. Fortunately, nobody on this site knows about all of mine.
And, yes, I will tee it up and take another whack at the Cat Club.

 

Mulligan? What about last year? Or the year before that?

 

+1 to keeping the people moving when picking up bottles, route them away from the line after pickup

Obviously it was overcrowded but my vote is for not having timed keg releases; having folks form impromptu lines an hour before the keg taps is killing traffic flow even more. Three years of having to ask people what line they are in because they are waiting on keg X to tap in 40mins. Not sure of the best way to display what's now being tapped but the secondary wait lines are killing. Those of you trying to get bottles and were stuck after 2pm know how this feels even more being surrounded by folks waiting for cases.

 

No, you threw stuff out there because you saw an opportunity to rant about things you despise. Did you even attend Huna Day that you have so many opinions about?

High-handed, holier-than-thou arrogance is far more damaging to "the cause" than people who love to trade & share beer with good friends across the country. I met multiple trading partners this weekend & had an absolute blast with them & their friends, sharing beer & swapping stories & laughing, & I'm certain I'll see some or all of them again down the road.

Perhaps that is something to "think" about.

 

I had to watch this video a few times to full see everything through the madness but the one thing that stuck out to me was how stressed Joe Redner was! If anyone on here thinks that anyone at CCB wanted any of this, they are dead wrong. There is no way the would over sell tickets. It had to be something with Eventbrite or scalpers printing multiples and selling them to random people.

As far as stopping when they hit 3500 bracelets goes, how do you know that all the legit people got in before the scammers? You face an even bigger problem if you cut the line off and legit paying people don't get in. I think when they realized what was happening the still could accomodate 10,000 people with 3 bottles each but not sell cases. They attempted to get everyone with a bracelet to the front of the line by announcing that cases would not be sold and trying to create a seperate line for people that had not gottent their 3 bottles yet. Unfortunately the "asshats," as someone reffered to the as, would not back up and let the banded people get their 3 bottles. When that was happening I think the decision was made to just sell it all off FFA style just to get the WAY TOO ROWDY crowd to disperse.

I think that CCB had a perfect plan for this year and they should do the exact same thing next year but just find a way to gurantee that only 3500 people can get in. I would suggest a physical ticket be printed and either mailed directly to the purchaser, (if they purchase online) or handed directly to the purchaser. (if they purchase in the tasting room/in person)

 

Does this mean we've reached the end of the cycle?

 

Just saw this

http://thefullpint.com/beer-news/exclusive-rip-hunahpus-day-will-go-distribution-next-year/

 

Yeah, but also DB BA, hunapoopoo, ghost of hunapu, etc.. I think they divided up the batches of Zhukov into a lot of different treatments. It just definitely looked like they were expecting a much smaller crowd this year bottles-wise and with all of the extra stouts, I think they under-produced expecting the smaller crowd.

Oh I agree. I think the proportion of fakes is a lot smaller than they think. 3,500 general tickets. 1,500 extra tickets before/after that and for every brewery/brewclub on that tap list an extra six tickets. I didn't take home a tap sheet so I can't add up all the unique breweries but the online list has approx 52 not including the homebrew clubs. That's an extra 312 tickets. It also doesn't count CCB employees or their friends/family, which might be out of the 1,500 extra tickets or not depending on how they did things for themselves. That's 5,312 tickets.

The rest of the people.... well, who knows. Fake tickets, sneak ins, whatever. The math doesn't lie. Somebody either way miscalculated, there was massive ticket fraud or huge CCB screw ups. No matter how you slice it up, it's still bologna.

At least CCB is in CYA mode and refunding the ticket prices. I'm sure they're hoping they don't get sued considering the time and expense people had invested in the event.

 

IMO, a solution to next years event is to sell wristbands only. You could purchase one online at CCB website and have it mailed to your house or you can purchase it at the brewery. Gold bands for ECC members and silver for general admission. Each purchase guarantees you x amount to beers for each armband with ECC members getting x amount of Huna + BA Huna. Of course x depends on amount available. Plus each armband is can bring 1 guest but the guest cannot buy bottles till after 4pm. No armband no entry. What you say?

Oh well.....and the memory remains.

 

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

 

No more Hunahpu Day, going into distro next year... So its now up to the retailers, 1pp limit guaranteed

 

Five years ago the average age of attendees of these types of events was probably 10-15 years older than it is now.

 

Seems like quite the knee-jerk reaction across the board from CCB on this whole debacle if Hunahpu Day is no more.

From free beer, to refunds for all, to 'we'll make it right for our El Catador members' to 'we're not doing this anymore', just seems like maybe the best thing to do would be to acknowledge the mess that occurred, and then make formal plans to reassess going forward. (akin to what Founders did after 2012 KBS Day)

If Three Floyds can make DLD 'work' (sure there are some kinks- looking at you those who waited in line in Group D and E- but on the whole the event in 2013 was very well run and organized for such a large amount of people), I don't see how CCB would be unable to follow through with a successful event in the future.

 

I have my fingers crossed that those are the collective beers of a group of ten people who went to Huna Day together.

 

If you read the comments in his reply he says that all of that stash is "the groups" and later says that it doesn't all belong to him, but rather he and the 7 other people that rode with him. Still, perhaps exercise better judgment; no need to show off when you know that a lot of people got none.