Local Council To Kill Beer Festivals in New Zealand?

There is a new beer festival “On The Lawn” looking to setup at the Mount for a 8th January Beer Festival.

I loved the Blues, Brew & BBQ’s event at the Mount. Shame the local council and police closed it down. It kind of all fell apart once they made it an R18 event, and kids and families couldn’t come any more. It seemed to be preloading cause the majority of the issues.

I really like beer festivals during summer time, where people are having a fun time, and sampling tasty beers in the sun.

Here are some details about “On The Lawn”

No beer over 5%abv ? If Epic was to go we would have ONE beer. So much for people being able to taste a range of different beers and flavours.

“FOOD – BEER – WINE” Question: Does the wine have to be 5% or below?

By controlling the ABV below 5% you are limiting the beer to mainstream industrial lagers, which the public have no respect for. They have no taste and you are just encouraging people to drink large volumes of flavourless beer.  This isn’t an environment to encourage education and sampling of new flavours and beer styles. The council is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy for trouble by implementing this ABV limit.

Not sure how they have sorted this out with the council, after Blues & Brews was closed down, and Bay Brew Fest couldn’t get out of the gates.

Looking forward to more details, and possibly a great event at the Mount, during the coming summer.

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Earlier in the year the “Bay Beer Fest” had to cancel their event due at a similar time and location, and made this statement:

“We have had huge support from prospective exhibitors, the public, council, the venue, and liquor licencing.  However the opposition towards the event by Tauranga Police has been our stumbling block.  In order to do justice to the amazing event we have planned, this opposition will not realistically leave us time to work through the issues that have been raised, to deliver the event to the public by 4th January 2015.”

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The last I heard about the “New Zealand Beer Festival 2015” in Auckland, was that the limit would be 6% abv for full serve of a beer. Last year the lines were too long because the small serve sizes of 165ml. I would expect they are going to have to do some awesome marketing and have some amazing value proposition to get people to come back after this year.

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Dear Council, do you think that limiting the ABV will give you the outcome you want.

It will stop many of the educated, sophisticated beer drinkers from going, as they will be limited to beer with little flavour, or a very limited choice of beer with flavour at these lower ABV levels.

Anyway just some thoughts about how the powers that be, are reducing choice, manipulating and socially engineering the public, “for their own good”.