Tag Archives: Cigar City Brewing

Hunahpu Day 2014: A Fullsome Apology & Some Unsolicited Advice

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When I got home, I had an apology from Cigar City waiting for me in my email:

So, today did not go as expected. We realize that there were a lot of issues with duplicate tickets, way too long waits in lines, and all of that. We can promise 100% that we are going to make it right, whether it be refund, or whether we brew a batch of beer that we will bottle and make completely free to all attendees that had issues today. We’re completely sorry for all issues that happened today. It really sucked. We completely understand how much it sucked and hate how much it sucked. We don’t want it to suck ever again. We will do what we can to make it right.

I don’t expect anyone, lest of all craft brewers, to be perfect.  It is a lot more important to me that they recognize when they’ve made mistakes and do better next time.  So this apology goes a long way to making things right for me.  And for the record, things went well-enough for me today:

  • I showed up shortly before 11am (as encouraged by Cigar City on twitter, etc.) and I had to wait more than 45 minutes to get in.  This is longer than I would have liked, but tolerable.
  • I bought my three bottles that I was allotted based on entry to the festival, plus another case.  But I spent several hours standing in line to accomplish this (and there were a ton of people around me in the scrum who still had their wristbands, meaning they hadn’t gotten their 3 bottle allotment yet).
  • I was very happy with the changes in procedure this year.  There were many more pouring stations, the small pours made it a lot easier to try more beers, and not having to pay each time made things flow much more quickly.

That said, the lines were still crazy, and there were just too many people for the space.  The last time I looked at the line to get in to Hunahpu Day was around 1:30pm (because I was basically in line for bottles the rest of the time I was there), and the line was still around the corner, down the block and out of sight.  I’m willing to bet many of those people didn’t even get in until it was too late to get bottles they were promised.

As 4pm rolled around, the crowd of people in front of the packaging hall started to get worried that there weren’t going to be enough cases to go around (or any cases at all, as one person said as they passed back through the line with their 3 bottles).  Everybody was still being nice, but some people were clearly spooked.  It all turned out fine for me, and I hope Cigar City can make everybody happy.  But it could easily have been much worse.

So, for the advice: please move this event.  I’m sure it’s great to have a huge festival at the brewery for many reasons, but there just isn’t enough space to do it responsibly.  There’s a giant football stadium right down the road with a gigantic parking lot — maybe they could help you out?  I’m sure there are a ton of other larger venues in town that could handle 3,500 people much more gracefully.  Because there was plenty of beer.  There were plenty of pouring stations.  There was plenty of goodwill and good cheer.  But there was simply not enough room.

Update: Just to clarify: by “plenty of beer” above, I mean there were plenty of beers on tap and pretty reasonable lines for those.  I don’t know how many bottles of Hunahpu there were, but I suspect there were enough for everybody who bought a ticket to get their allotted 3 bottles, and for there to be some cases left over for people to at least have a chance to buy more.  I don’t think it was a shortage of beer that caused the problems today — it was the lack of space and lack of active management of the bottle line.

Hunaphu Day 2013

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We headed down to Tampa for Cigar City’s release of Hunahpu.  This is no ordinary bottle release — this is their most sought-after beer, the line starts forming up the night before, and if you’re lucky enough to get any at all, you only get three bottles.  In short, it’s more of a festival than a bottle release.

So we got a hotel a few blocks away, and I planned to get up at 5am and walk over.  I couldn’t sleep (strange bed or anticipation?), so I gave up shortly before 4am and headed over.  There was a small line already, with most of the people camped out, and I estimated I was about 75th in line.  There was a steady trickle of people joining the line, which quickly stretched down the block and into the parking lot of the shopping center around the corner.  So they wound up handing out the golden wristbands early (prompting lots of panicked phone calls to people who were supposed to join people in line), and they opened the gates just after 7am.

Cigar City blocked off their parking lot, and setup several trailers to serve beer, in addition to the two bars normally operating in their tasting room.  There were about a dozen food trucks, a few merch booths, live music, and some tents and carnival-style amusements way in the back by their new brewhouse.  The taplist was very impressive.  Everybody was in a good and accommodating mood.

The only problem was the size: there were just too many people in too small a space.  Lines for everything were long, snaking around and into the end of other lines.  Navigating the space was difficult because the lines were taking up so much space.  The police showed up shortly after 6am — I thought they were going to complain about people walking in the street, or drinking on the sidewalk, but they were apparently upset about the line winding around the block, which prompted the early opening.

They’ve already said the event is too big to hold at the brewery, and might be held at a larger venue or spread over several days.  But other than having a larger space, I think there are a couple of other things they might do to help make things go more smoothly:

  • Post the master taplist — I was having my first glass of Hunahpu in the tasting room, when someone at my table noticed a folded-up piece of paper which turned out to be the master taplist.  This was an invaluable source of information for us to figure out which of the serving points had which beers.  Without this, you would have to walk up to each one and read the paper taplist at the bar to figure out where to go.  Maybe this doesn’t get sorted out soon enough to be printed up and handed out to everyone.  But posting it online, or even setting up a bulletin board somewhere so people could consult it would be nice.
  • They required tokens instead of cash for all the outside bars, which definitely sped up service.  But they were letting people get samples and several drinks per person at a time, both of which slow things down.  Of course, more space and more service points is the real solution to the problem.
  • I’m also not a big fan of first-come-first-served-line-around-the-block as a strategy for rare bottle releases.  I think it would make a lot more sense to have a lottery for tickets.  Or auction off a portion of the bottles and/or tickets.  Maybe a combination of all three — they could have a first-come-first-served ticket sale for a majority of the tickets, and then an auction and/or lottery for the rest.  But whatever the method, selling tickets ahead of time would make it much easier to plan for the number of people who were coming.

His & Hers

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We didn’t get any barrel-aged Marshal Zhukov — although we are normally very organized and early people, we arrived at Cigar City about 15 minutes after they started selling growlers, to find a rather long line snaking out of their tasting room and out into the parking lot.

When the news came out that the last keg blew, the line dissolved, with most of us heading into the tasting room to pickup whatever bottles and growlers we could.  There was a big crowd right in front of me swooping up the last of the Cucumber Saison.  But they brought out a few more boxes, and I did get a few bottles.  I also got a couple bottles of their collaboration with the Bruery, Dos Costas Oeste — cedar and lemon wood versions.

The cucumber saison tastes like, well, cucumber.  And since Wind likes cucumbers more than me, I guess it’s no surprise she likes it more than I do.  Though I’m now wondering why I like cucumber so much more with creaminess, and thinking about pairing cream cheese and cucumbers on a bagel.  The Dos Costas is the other way around — we tried the cedar aged version first, and I liked it quite a bit, particulary enjoying the spicy, astringent cedar.  Wind didn’t like it nearly so much, and glady handed me her glass to finish.

I guess the moral of the story is: don’t show up late for a Cigar City release, there will be a crowd of people in front of you.  Though they put out so much good beer, it really doesn’t matter, you can still find something interesting anyway.