{"id":18356,"date":"2016-08-29T02:06:29","date_gmt":"2016-08-28T14:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=18356"},"modified":"2016-08-29T02:06:29","modified_gmt":"2016-08-28T14:06:29","slug":"yall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2016\/08\/29\/yall\/","title":{"rendered":"A festival for the rest of y’all"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Light-up<\/a>
…and your lightbulbs, just to complete the metaphor<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So that<\/em> was the week that was. The week that was a while ago, now. How time flies when you’re quietly recuperating. Weirdly, given the work I gravitate towards, I’m a natural introvert and crowds of lovely beer nerds are still, you know, crowds. I think exhaustixhilirated<\/em> just about covers it; sound prediction there, Phil From The Past<\/a>. You get a strange view of things during festivals when you’re doing<\/em> too much to do<\/em> much, but from where I was standing, this is what Beervana \u2014 and its satellite events in The Road Thereto \u2014 looked like:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The week before the weekend<\/h3>\n

August has truly turned into an endurance sport in Wellington with the continued evolution of The Road to Beervana<\/a> \u2014 especially considering that the fortnight-long\u00a0Wellington On A Plate<\/a> (a food festival with beer as no small component) follows\u00a0immediately<\/em> after. There were officially fifty events in the R.T.B. schedule, which is fairly freakin’ overwhelming. It’s already one-fifth the scale of Good Beer Week<\/a> in Melbourne, which is extremely well-established and takes place in a city ten times<\/em> the size of ours, making\u00a0for a crowded little week.\u00a0Some of the events obviously cannibalised attendance that might’ve gone to others, and you could see a little fatigue set in \u2014 so\u00a0maybe there’s grounds for the occasionally-heard call to curate<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> things a little more tightly, but I’m of the opinion that there’s a weird kind of freedom in a calendar so crammed that you cannot possibly do everything<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"ParrotDog<\/a>
Nitro Otis (and burgers, out of frame): blatant Philtrap<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The only thing I managed to attend<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> was an hour or so at PirateDog<\/a>, the pop-up ParrotDog \/ Pirate Life bar at the former’s Vivian Street brewery. Which is soon to be their\u00a0former<\/em> brewery, since they so-definitively smashed their equity crowdfunding campaign<\/a> to build themselves a bigger-better HQ a little way out of town. They’d met their $2M target that day,<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> so the mood in the place was fairly jubilant, and I’d wandered up there with fellow beer writer Michael Donaldson \u2014 who wrote a\u00a0way<\/em> more timely summation of his experience<\/a> \u2014 to find they were serving my beloved ‘Otis’ oatmeal stout on Nitro; I had two glasses and accompanied\u00a0each<\/em> with a stupidly-excellent burger from Serial Griller<\/a>, the food truck run by former brewer Dave Kurth<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and his wife. I damn near sprained my face from grinning so hard.\u00a0I can’t even say I’m mad that\u00a0y’all were having fun all over town; I compressed my own little festival’s worth of fun into two pints and two burgers.<\/p>\n

\"Modern<\/a>
Caffeinated nightcap<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Work had its own rewards, as well.<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The Junk Food Degustation and Cocktail Night were both well-received \u2014 the former got a nice write-up from recently-unretired beer writer Hadyn Green<\/a> \u2014\u00a0and entertainingly bent people’s brains in various directions. As is the point, surely.<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> And\u00a0Thursday’s Great Beer Debate<\/a>, which I helped dream up, was pretty well-attended considering we were basically offering a panel show in a party town. The discussion \u2014 on the question of independence in the beer business and what all these mergers might do \/ have done to the landscape \u2014 was excellent;\u00a0our speakers<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> were all in fine form, airing a well-worn topic in an illuminating and interesting way. Hopefully our recording of the conversation is broadcast-worthy (it was in\u00a0boxy room at a long table with just two microphones); I’d like to see\u00a0it reach a wider audience. I’m a big fan of\u00a0wonkish<\/em>\u00a0beer-related activities like these (perhaps obviously), but it’s always a hard sell, and I am (admittedly) a terrible salesman. It was definitely a worthy experiment, and something I’m keen to work on refining.<\/p>\n

\"Panhead<\/a>
Way better than that other Subway-themed joint<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Twenty-something hours\u00a0on the concrete<\/h3>\n

Returning for another year to the often-maligned stadium,\u00a0but this time taking up the entire circumference of the concourse, it was easy to assume that the plan was basically “same-same, but a little bigger”. Quickly, though, you could see the effect of a myriad other tweaks and\u00a0improvements, and the general consensus quickly coalesced around “best ever”. That took me by surprise \u2014 not because I disagreed, but because previous years had seen the bubbling up of a kind of ‘geek backlash’ which was partially what I had on the brain\u00a0when I wrote my musing on the beer-festival-mindset<\/a>;\u00a0too often people say something has lost its mojo without realising they might’ve just outgrown it in some way.<\/p>\n

\"Pirate<\/a>
Rumbustification<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I often bang on about beer festivals as a place for experimentation \u2014 for\u00a0both sides<\/em> of the bar \u2014 and vaguely in that spirit we also had a rethink of that ‘educational’ side of things I like working in. We took it out into the floor, ditching the seminar room in favour of trying out ‘walking tours’ on various themes (sour beer, U.S. & Australian beer, “weird beer”, and beer basics). Again, that’s a strange, nerdy concept and perhaps a hard sell \u2014 and Megan and I were quite the sight leading gaggles of people through the crowds, holding our dorky Tour Guide signs aloft \u2014 but they worked surprisingly well. Attendance varied wildly from two dozen to\u00a0two<\/em>, but those who came along really\u00a0to appreciated a chance to ask some questions, hear from some brewers,<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and get a little context for their tastings. With a little better promotion (again; I’m a terrible salesman, and was giving away my time for free) and few modifications to the timing and staging, I think they’d make a great part of any large-scale festival. They took a\u00a0lot<\/em> out of me \u2014 as much as I love rambling about beer to anyone who’ll listen, I am (as I said) constitutionally an introvert and need good doses of calm solitude between literally parading strangers around. Needless to say, “quiet time” is rarer than riesling at a packed-out beer festival. But I’d do it again.<\/p>\n

\"Garage<\/a>
An unusual restorative<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Between tours, I mostly sought refuge at the big colourful birthday-cake-themed bar of my old comrades from Garage Project \u2014 who were a) conveniently located, b) plying their usual festival wizardry, and c) sympathetic to my slightly-dazed state \u2014 so I didn’t get to try much else, beer-wise, other than a few glasses here and there late on the Friday night. You can see the skew in my perspective\u00a0if I tell you that my stand-out flavour experiences were Garage Project’s sour traffic light (above) with fairy bread, the Nitro cold-drip coffee each morning, and a cheeseburger spring roll from Five Boroughs. I’m very much not the person to give you a quasi-objective view of what was on offer this year.<\/p>\n

\"Base<\/a>
Welcome visitor<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But everything was looking pretty great. Breweries continue to dress up their stands\u00a0in ways that make it more carnival than trade show,<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and keep finding new ways to do so; indeed, one of my only criticisms is that the Beervana-hosted bars now look a little sad. A dedicated sour beer bar and the Pink Boots bar were both excellent ideas \u2014 and poured\u00a0great beer\u2014 but both needed a little love in the design department to keep them from being overlooked.\u00a0The brutal concrete stadium itself is often seen as the ball around the ankle of Beervana. Hell, I’ve said so myself. But now I’m seriously tempted to change my vote.<\/span>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The ‘full loop’ is absolutely the right thing to do and opened up vastly more elbow room as well as obviously getting rid of the need to constantly backtrack, but it was more than that: they’ve figured out how to dress the place, getting rid of clutter at ground level, having many bars face seating rather than other bars, and\u00a0so on. GABS Auckland, which looked good despite its anonymous and boring showground location (and when the gorgeous spaces available in Melbourne<\/a> and Sydney really set the bar absurdly high), proved that you can do a lot with nothing bloody much in terms of a venue. Beervana did a fine\u00a0job of rising to that, this year.<\/p>\n

So I’ll be back. You couldn’t stop me, really. Please just remind me how thoroughly the week kicks my ass, and I’ll try to be better prepared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So that was the week that was. The week that was a while ago, now. How time flies when you’re quietly recuperating. Weirdly, given the work I gravitate towards, I’m a natural introvert and crowds of lovely beer nerds are still, you know, crowds. I think exhaustixhilirated just about covers it; sound prediction there, Phil … Continue reading A festival for the rest of y’all<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4046,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/05\/18\/gabs-2012-day-two-and-three-photos\/","url_meta":{"origin":18356,"position":0},"title":"GABS 2012: Day Two & Three Photos, with Afterthoughts","author":"Phil","date":"May 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"GABS Weekend was genuinely awesome -- and pretty-much exhausting. I just never\u00a0caught up on the fact that my trip started with 26-odd-hours awake running on a mere two hours\u00a0sleep. But these are trifling #firstworldproblems; I was having a marvellous time, giddy with beer-geek joy, doing a bit of volunteer monkey-work,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Observations"","block_context":{"text":"Observations","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/reports\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Queue of visitors","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/GABS-2012-Queue-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2756,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/04\/29\/yeastie-boys-rex-attitude\/","url_meta":{"origin":18356,"position":1},"title":"Yeastie Boys ‘Rex Attitude’","author":"Phil","date":"April 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"With my beer photos, I vacillate wildly between 1) painstakingly setting something up, mucking about with lighting and re-arranging things far in the background (even when they aren't mine and when doing so is a nuisance to someone else, I'll admit), and 2) just getting it done-in-one, cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9 style\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Yeastie Boys 'Rex Attitude'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Yeastie-Boys-Rex-Attitude-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4513,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/07\/06\/left-coast-the-wedge\/","url_meta":{"origin":18356,"position":2},"title":"Left Coast ‘The Wedge’","author":"Phil","date":"July 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It appears I might have \"Black IPA\" on the brain. 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I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Left Coast 'The Wedge'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Left-Coast-The-Wedge-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5438,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2013\/04\/03\/beer-diary-podcast-s03e01\/","url_meta":{"origin":18356,"position":3},"title":"Beer Diary Podcast s03e01: A Very Good Friday","author":"Phil","date":"April 3, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Back with unusual promptness \u2014 which is hopefully a good omen \u2014 George and I sat down on Friday for a few beers and a somewhat-supersized season opener for another round of the podcast. We try a couple of new-ish releases, and one bottle that'd been sitting around waiting for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Podcast episodes"","block_context":{"text":"Podcast episodes","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/podcast-episodes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Epic 'Mosaic', label detail","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Epic-Mosaic-label-detail-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":25201,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2025\/03\/27\/collingwood-churn\/","url_meta":{"origin":18356,"position":4},"title":"Churn \u2014 on life, death, and rebirth in (and around) Collingwood","author":"Phil","date":"March 27, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"(...of beer venues, I mean.) For the six years I lived in Melbourne I worked within a surprisingly-tight area; a two-kilometre circle centered somewhere in Collingwood, in the inner-North-East. 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