blanc Brew Fest 2014, Henderson Auckland
14 Craft Breweries
350 People
1pm – 7pm
25C Temperature
97% Humidity
What a really nice festival. It turned out to be the perfect size venue, with the right number of people. People were really well-behaved, really interested in having a chat about the beer they were tasting, and generally there for a pretty nice time.
The brewers seemed to be having a good time too, with the crowd being a nice manageable size, so everyone got to have a chat with each other. Always fun when brewers catch up.
There seemed to be only about three security, who seemed pretty bored, they even tried some Culley’s Carolina Reaper hot sauce, which was much hotter than expected to their surprise.
It was kind of like having a bunch of mates over to try a few beers.
I’m going to say that maybe this is the beer festival of the future for New Zealand. The big festivals seem to be getting a lot of heat from liquor licensing and the police.
Maybe it was because of my expectations based on other beer festivals I’ve been to, that this one pleasantly surprised me.
If they do this again next year I will be first to put my hand up to attended, and first to tell everyone they should be quick to get their tickets before they sell our.
Well done and congratulations blanc.
(for some reason I can’t get all the photos to show up in the preview of this post, so I am going to just publish it. I will get better, as I become more familiar with WordPress)
blanc are in a rather enviable position with regard to the type of licence they hold, which obviously not only allows the to circumvent dealing with the Waitakere Licencing Trust and stock awesome beer and wine others out that way cannot, but sue to having an events centre as well, can also organise a festival like this for a good number of attendees without the requirement for each stallholder to have their own goddamn licence and a duty manager at all times.. it will remain a complete P in the A for anyone else to organise a festival of any reasonable size- needing one DM per 50 people is just the tip of a very expensive pile of considerations.