Yesterday, we went to Cigar City’s annual bottle-release-and-beer-festival, Hunahpu’s Day.  In addition to releasing their Hunahpu imperial stout, there were dozens of breweries from all over the country, with more than 200 beers on tap. This was Wind’s first time going to Hunahpu’s Day, and after hearing the stories of last year, she was excited but not entirely sure what to expect.

As it turns out, Cigar City did a number of things differently this year, and for the most part the changes worked very well:

• There were paper tickets from Ticketfly, with the purchaser’s name on them, instead of online ticketing.  Tickets and IDs were checked at entry, which got rid of the duplicate ticket problems from last year and kept the crowd from getting out of control.
• Lunch was provided by Cigar City’s brewpub/catering service as part of the admission price.  There weren’t as many options as last year, but the provided lunch was good (Redbeard loved the Ropa Vieja, and Wind really liked her Bratwurst).  The line looked very long, but moved very quickly.
• There were no bottle sales during the event, and no extra bottles sold first-come-first-serve at the end of the event.  Instead, everyone got 4 bottles in a tote bag as they left (with no re-entry).  This went very smoothly as we left, and avoided having to stand in a long line to purchase bottles.  It also avoided a problem Redbeard had in past years: buying bottles in the middle of the event and having to lug them around all day.

The good parts of the festival from last year were preserved: all-you-can-drink small pours from dozens of breweries made for very short lines.  Not having tickets or tokens or any other payment made everything quick and easy.  We’re glad they kept this system from last year instead of returning to 8 oz. pours for $5 like 2013. Redbeard made a list of about 20 beers he wanted to try, and we managed to have more than half of them (along with some last minute additions).  There were a few breweries that ran out of beer after a couple of hours (like Cascade), but the vast majority were still going strong when we left near the end of the event.

Unlike last year, things went pretty smoothly and there was no angry crowd chanting “Cigar City Sucks!” when the beer ran out.  In fact, Cigar City  has a sense of humor (or was pessimistically planning to capitalize on any failures this year) — in additional to the usual merch, they had a “Cigar City Sucks!” t-shirt on sale. Redbeard had to get one, which resulted in us standing in the second longest line of the day (see below for the winner):

Of course, no beer festival would be complete without at least some logistical problems. Compared to last year these are manageable, at least:

• The longest line of the day, by far, was the line for entry.  We arrived 30 minutes before the event started, and the line was down the block, across the street, and snaking all the way around the edge of their parking lot. It moved slowly and it took us an hour and fifteen minutes before we got in.  It’s not really surprising that the line was slower because they were checking IDs, but they could have started much sooner to work through the line before the starting time.  We’ve seen other festivals do this effectively by taking tickets and letting attendees into a holding area (sometimes with food — looking at you, Vermont Brewer’s Festival, well done!).
• There was very little shade at the event.  There was one tent with seating at the far end of the space (which was completely packed), and each brewery tent had a small amount of shade at the front of the line.  But since the event’s held in Cigar City’s parking lot, it was otherwise in full sun, with temperatures in the mid-80’s, under a cloudless sky. A few tents in the middle of the space would go a long way towards providing more shade and helping people keep cool.
• Even capped at 2000 attendees, the space was pretty crowded. The lines for beer were (mostly) nice and short, but the food and merch lines were long and made it hard to move around the space.

All three of these issues probably boil down to not having enough space.  If they can’t move the event to a larger space, they should consider splitting it into a couple of sessions.  The Vermont Brewers Festival does this (three 4-hour sessions over two days), and that’s a great way to serve more people in a limited space.  It would also help address the shade problem if people could go to a session that wasn’t right in the middle of the day.

But, let’s not end on a low note — it was a great day and we had some amazing finds. We both agree the clear winners of the day were Nola and Night Shift. Getting to have about 6 different sours within 40 minutes of entering the event was a (tipsy) delight. In fact, some of the beers toward the front of the space were so good that that is probably why we didn’t get to back before some of the more big name brewers ran out.