Utah Brewery Map

Sunday, August 26, 2012

2012 Utah Beerfest Recap

From my perspective the 2012 Utah Beer Festival was surprising success. More breweries pouring led to shorter lines and a much happier crowd.

The Gallivan Center is a slightly smaller area than Washington Square,the previous festival location, but the separation of the brewers and the clear entry and exit points made for easy flow in and out of the beer tents.

 I made it a point to check the wait in some of the longer lines and my longest wait was only 12 minutes. That may be unacceptable to some but was not that big a deal to me or those who were with me. 

I think the date and time also had a hand in this years success. A six hour festival on a Sunday afternoon may not be the ideal time for many that may need to be "fresh" come Monday morning

It looks like the crew at City Weekly has learned from their growing pains and are on the path to managing a great festival that may be capable  of supporting the entire community.

Did you have a different experience?

5 comments:

kent said...

Awesome, I'm glad it was a success.

By the way folks, take note of our glorious leader's pic on the front of Monday's Salt Lake Trib.

Dono said...

That some mighty fancy high class petite beer mug holding from Mr Mikey. Nice pic and way to represent. :)

Mikey said...

You need to counterbalance the mug with the pinky finger to obtain the optimal swig.

John Saltas said...

Mikey
After having our ass handed to us in the past, getting this right was very important to City Weekly. We didn't want to let our readers down--folks like you. Unfortunately, like everything else ground breaking in Utah, there is no handbook for how to do a good beer festival, though we've been to Idaho and Denver, taken advice, and tried to copy as best we could--only to find traps at every stop. Like after our first one, having new legislation written that made it so we had to go to tokens--it only affected our festival. That meant more waiting in lines right there. Or, on Sunday at noon, we were told we couldn't sell our commemorative glasses!
So, we're very happy folks came this year--it was indeed a big success, a great time, and we're already looking forward to an even better experience next year. From the time we began the paper, we've thought like this--we won't let them win. You help us win. Thanks,

Ricky H. said...

This fest was the best utah fest yet. When I first showed up at 2:30 not only were the lines short, but the first 4 places I went didn't even have a line. Having a couple "joke" breweries like ShockTop really helped because I didn't even have to worry about visiting them, and people went there and made the lines for good beer shorter. The layout was great, I got to try a few beers that I've never gotten to try and had a blast. Drastic improvement.

---Ricky H.