Yesterday was my first Oregon Brewers Festival. It wasn’t what I expected. Normally if there is an event at the waterfront you have all tons of booths selling stuff, businesses promoting themselves, and just weird stuff. You don’t have that here but I did see a guy with a pretzel necklace like the candy necklaces kids have. Couldn’t find anyone selling it though.
Instead of booths for the beer they have high tables set up as a bar and there would be ten beers lined up. Behind the servers was a trailer with a placard of which beer they were selling. It seemed underwhelming.
A friend wrote on Facebook that he and his friend thought the festival sucked. And while I was underwhelmed based on expectations, everyone was smiling. Then I got it. This is just the biggest BBQ anyone gets to go to, and without the rides, sideshows, or other draws, you just get beer fans.
You have a handful of restaurants serving burgers, fries, elephant ears (you have to serve those), etc but it’s really about the beer. I was surprised that there were only 36 beers there from Oregon breweries as PortlandBeer.org reported. I guess you won’t have much of a festival with just 36 beers.
If you love beer, this is the place for you. It is what it is and you’ll love it for being just that.
My wife & I volunteered selling tokens yesterday. We've worked the opening shift for about 6-7 years now. Yesterdays weather was just about perfect and the crowd seemed to be pretty happy. The festival is focused on beer and they go out of their way to bring beers to portland that we don't normally get a chance to taste otherwise.
Funny that you mentioned the pretzel necklace. We had a couple visiting from San Diego ask "where are the pretzel necklaces?" when they got their tokens. They had seen some at a beer festival in SD last month. About 10 minutes later a guy wearing a pretzel necklace came up to buy tokens and when I asked him about his, he said that his kids made it for him.
I have been to a BrewFest before and this by far was my least favorite. Let's put it this way, normally it's hard for me to resist gettin' my drink on. Last night, I walked through the entire park in just a matter of minutes because I saw nothing worthwhile. The energy just wasn't there nor the large number of businesses that I'm used to seeing out there. Lot of disappointed people, I imagine.
I think someone could make some money selling those. Great idea.
So the amount of businesses what smaller than normal. Okay, that goes with my original idea. I wonder if they regret it. If I had something to sell I would go. 🙂