Curious to see how many BA members are attending Snallygaster 2021 in DC this weekend; and if any have reviewed the beer list to see what beers are top recommended to try? From the Snallygaster facebook page there is the link (below) that has the sortable beer list; plus it is on untappd. https://linktr.ee/snallygasterdc
I am going. I hope it doesn't rain. I only have the basic pass, not the VIP. I have done that twice before. Some of the bangers will be gone, but plenty of fire beers will still be available. The untappd list is very helpful. Know how to use the sort and filter options. Generally, I try to do breweries who don't normally ship to the DMV, or beers that are typically very pricey when sold in a bottle or on draft. That said, I still try to limit the high abv choices, so I can try more options. And if I sample a beer that's just "meh" there's no crime in dumping it and moving on to something else. It also helps if you have a partner who you can share your samples with. That way you can sample twice as many beers. Have fun and be safe!
Quick Snally recap: The event was a pretty good success, good turnout, and the weather was fine (no rain). With just the basic pass, I had most of my selections still available, some of the top rated beers were sold out by the end of the VIP session, but there was still plenty of other 4.0+ beers to sample. There was a lot of space so the event felt pretty spread out and not overly crowded. I think the longest beer line I had was about 6 people a couple of times. One challenge I think was the food lines, there were not many food trucks and it took my friends about an hour to get through their line (but we kept ferrying them beer while inline). Beer-wise, I stayed with mostly out of town breweries that don't distribute in the DMV area, did a lot of marzen, fesbier, IPA, and toss in a few sours and big ABV imperial stouts. My top rated beers were: Abomination Wandering into the Fog, Firestone Big Mood, J.Wakefield Sneaker Sharks, and Alvarado Contains No Juice. Next year, I'll probably return to getting the VIP pass again to try more of the top beers and have bit more elbow room.
That's not to say that some of the breweries didn't have huge lines. I got there at 2pm, and before they ran out, saw huge lines at Foam, Veil, Vitamin Sea, and Mortalis. I'm sure Cantillion, 3F, Monkish, Trillium and Bissell had huge line too, but they were gone even before I made it to their areas .Of course there were plenty of breweries that did not have long lines, and those are the ones I went to. The Fidens line was surprisingly pretty short each of the three times I went through it. Hudson Valley had no line, Sante Adairius was easy to get, and as seems to often be the case, Triple Crossing was underappreciated (when comapared to Veil.)
I had an enjoyable time as well, but if that truly was 50% capacity (as stated in their FAQs), I'd hate to have seen 100%...
I went to the sold out 2018 and 2019 Snallys, and I would say Saturday was noticeably and thankfully less crowded but it still seemed like it was closer to 75% instead of 50%.
