Milwaukee Brewfest 2010: A Blast or a Bomb?

Held right on the lake in McKinley Park, Milwaukee, WI, you can’t ask for a better location for a brew fest to finally arrive in the Brew City! After a quick lunch/ gut-full-up at Buffalo Wild Wings on Water Street, Sweem and I hoofed it for a while through downtown before calling a cab to take us the rest of the way. We arrived at the north entrance around 1:55 for VIP behind a number of other people.

After receiving our tickets from Will-Call we donned a wrist band and received a tent layout and event pamphlet, a pint glass, and a t-shirt, and headed inside the grounds. Two large tents were separated by a giant grass space with picnic tables sprinkled lightly throughout. A pavilion/stage was to the east of the area facing west where the crowd would be with booths flanking either side of it. The whole event was enclosed by a bright orange snow fence staked in the ground. A pretty dang good layout for a fest I’d say.

We made our way to the first thing I wanted to hit before I had too much to drink: Miller Valley Brewing. I wanted to give the Batch 19, Wild Ting IPA, and Lemon Weiss a go. Wild Ting was the only thing worth drinking and the fact they weren’t even ready by VIP entrance was shameful. Around the corner was the VIP beer & Gluten free booth which housed nothing out of the ordinary. Southern Tier, Dogfish Head, Rogue, and Jolly Pumpkin were featured among a few other brews, none of which were rare or hard-to-get making us wonder why they were “VIP beers”. We sampled the Jolly Pumpkin E.S. Bam and made our way to the next thing that piqued our interest.

From there, the majority of the beers served at the fest were readily available at any local liquor store in the greater Milwaukee area. This seemed to be a major problem for people expecting a Craft Brew Fest. While almost everything was craft brew, only a few beverages available were truly memorable as most were generally available locally. I wasn’t at all surprised to see that most of the beer pourers were also volunteers who knew little about the beer they were serving. The places with the honest-to-God company reps were the places worth checking out, especially if you came to the fest to sample things you may have not had before. Having that person to guide you through the beers and brewery is a key step in tasting a new product. The lack of craft beer generally unavailable to the locals was one of the bigger complaints I noticed but it’s one complaint that shouldn’t be taken out on the breweries. Without going too far into the politics of something like this, an aspect I don’t even fully grasp yet, we can suffice it to say, the breweries aren’t responsible for which of their products were available at this particular event. But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves; let’s back up a bit.

After our VIP sampling, I witnessed possibly the best brew fest invention I had ever laid eyes upon. This no doubt came straight from the witty mind of Lakefront’s own President and Engineer, Russ Kilsch: the mobile beer/keg dispensing system. Step one, have a strapping young lad (or in the case of this fest, an older and well-apt brewery employee) strap on a hiking back-pack frame-looking device with a CO-2 tank mounted to the top and beer-dispensing hosing coming out the side. Step two, pull a keg-wet-suit on (what looked to be) a sixth-barrel. Step three, strap the keg to the mobile unit-aka-person, have them walk around and dispense full pints of beer to a) lighten the keg faster and b) serve more beer faster to keep serving cold beer. This wasn’t the only major win for Lakefront at Milwaukee Brewfest, but I’ll get to that later.

Back to the beer. Possibly some of the most memorable beer came from the homebrew tent next to the stage presented by some friends Chris and Mike among others I met here for the first time: Beer Buffalo Lodge (liked on the right-hand site of BeerFM). Their on-tap homebrew was potent and flavorful, winning over fest-goers all day. Their Rye’d The Buffalo Double IPA clocked in at just over 11% was like a hoppy, fruity, loaf of bread. Not only did they serve beer they had brewed, they also brewed beer ON SITE as a demonstration! How awesome is that?

Milwaukee Brewfest also had a few events occurring through the fest culminating with the Brewfest Queen Announcement, something a lot of people gathered around the stage for but what I saw was an opportunity to hit beer lines when they were at their shortest. Attractive women at a beer fest seemed too much of a cliché gimmick for me. When these little events weren’t going on bands played on the stage facing the crowd to keep everyone entertained with tunes. Food was also available at reasonable prices. I personally went to Toppers Pizza, pizza I’ve never had before. For around $6 I got pizza sticks, pizza crust cut into sticks topped with cheese and served with a dipping sauce of your choice, and a slice of pepperoni pizza. Shortly after finishing my food, the announcer signaled everyone towards Toppers for $1 pizza (lowered from $2.50 a slice). I power-walked twenty feet and got myself two more slices just before a flood of people bum-rushed over like a heard of sheep rounded up by a dog. It was definitely good pizza!

But with the good comes the bad, and there were certainly things that can be improved upon for next year’s Milwaukee Brewfest, which, I’m sure based on the turnout this year, will take place.

Let’s start with the most obvious and most talked about problem with the Milwaukee Brewfest: everyone running out of beer. When the fest is advertised for 3-7 (2-7 for VIP) with unlimited tasting the whole time, people will expect beer to be available from three until seven o’clock at night. This fest pretty much ran dry around 6 P.M. with a lot of booths vacating even earlier! I was meaning to take a picture inside the south tent around six o’clock.  There wasn’t a single person there! That’s just unacceptable. Raffles can be done to recoup costs for left over beer. There are plenty of ways to get rid of left-overs. Hell, give ‘em to me! Having a fest run (almost) dry an hour before it’s supposed to is just poor planning. When I say, almost run dry, it’s because the only two booths that continued to serve beer past about six o’clock were Lakefront and Milwaukee Brewing Co. I had not talked to Milwaukee, but I know Lakefront made another trip to their brewery to retrieve more beer to meet the demands of the crowd. That was one hell of a move which made their line just about as equally as long as the bathroom line and also made them look like heroes.

Second, and just as equally important, there were only 12 Port-a-Potties for around 3,000 attendees. This is just as unacceptable. It must have been around five o’clock when most people bladders reached a bursting point and the lines reached excruciatingly long lengths. I tried to purchase my way into the front of one of the lines only to hear, “we’ve been waiting for over an hour so it’ll cost you at least $100.” Wow! Desperate, I started looking around for the shortest line and saw a guy going between two beer trailers as well as a line, A LINE, of guys waiting to relieve themselves in a waist-high walled-off corner by the lake. The saddest part of this was the fact that, not only were they in plain view of the whole fest, but there was S.W.A.T. everywhere, not Milwaukee Police, S.W.A.T. I heard from one attendee who saw a guy draining a mere two feet away from a uniformed Milwaukee S.W.A.T. officer who did nothing. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand the nature of their presence is to keep the peace, which they certainly did (and I appreciate), but holy crap, public urination left and right!

I ended up in line with some awesome people for about 40-45 minutes trying to forget that I was about to soak my pants by talking about the event so far. This is a fest based around consuming liquids; there should have been at least triple the amount of Port-a-Potties available.

Third, and certainly not least, it had been said already at the fest and on online forums, but when the website claims to have ticket limitations of 2,000 attendees, a rather intimate fest is expected. Instead, information spread through the crowd like wildfire that over 3,000 people had been let in just due to walk-ups that weren’t turned away. This problem lead to instant depletion of Milwaukee Brewfest pint glasses within an hour (from my understanding) of the three o’clock opening as well as the beer depletion earlier than expected. Again, when something is promised like a free pint glass which goes unfulfilled, there is an issue. This was slightly remedied, once again by Lakefront and Milwaukee Brewing Co. I began seeing Riverwest pint glasses floating through the crowd, and as something I designed and had not yet seen, I immediately took interest. I asked Russ Klisch of Lakefront and he said they brought 500 pints from their brewery to meet the demands of the fest-goers who, in the mean time were drinking from plastic SOLO cups.

Easily the best part of this fest was the crowd though. Not only was everyone awesome and generally courteous, I can’t begin to list how many friendly and talkative people attended. Larry for Sierra Nevada, Russ and Chris from Lakefront, Mike from Hinterland, Mike from Crispin, Ken from Beer Capitol, John and Dan from Beechwood, as well as all the fantastic people I met all were a blast to carry on conversations with. I saw no fights or rowdiness, in part due to S.W.A.T. presence I’m certain of. Sure, there were a lot of people who were drunk, myself included, but when you have five hours (five advertised anyway) of unlimited drinking, that’s certainly to be expected. Most people seemed like, while having a good time, they were in control of themselves (save for some bladder relief). Compared, for example, to Dark Lord Day 2010, this fest was like a day at church.

Overall, I personally count Milwaukee Brewfest 2010 as a success. Sure it didn’t feature epic, one-off, or super-rare beer, but it did have good offerings for what was there. Was it worth the money? Well, that I’m not so sure about. Yes if you received your glass and had your fill before things ran out. No if you ended up with a plastic cup and like the smart imbiber you are, paced yourself, ending up with fewer samples. Either way, based on the popularity of the event despite the grumblings about the shortcomings, which were acknowledged by staff, Milwaukee Brewfest seemed to have done very well and will continue on next year I’m sure. You can count this beer lover as a guaranteed repeat attendee for sure and a promoter of the only brew fest held in Milwaukee as it’ll be much better in 2011. Cheers to all that made it a good fest and thanks for all of those I talked to, making it even more fun for me to be at!

-Andy