Nick Larson and Jake Devincenzi
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Kinesiology senior Nick Larson and aerospace engineering senior Jake Devincenzi are Mustang News beer columnists.
This past weekend, the California Festival of Beers (Beer Fest) came to town, boasting yet another sold-out crowd. With more than 60 breweries and 200 beers, we woke up like kids on Christmas morning — visions of Alesmith, Lagunitas and Stone dancing in our heads.
We left our house early to walk to the festival, foreseeing an inability to operate a car later in the day. Our VIP passes were waiting for us, and we set off into the E-Z Up paradise an hour before the festival opened. This was the best hour of the day, as the beer was already flowing and the gates were closed. We were able to geek out with important people from our favorite breweries while drinking their beer before they were swamped by the masses of thirsty festival-goers.
It was five minutes until 11 a.m., and the barbarians were at the gates. We stood in admiration of those who would stand in line for beer at 11 a.m. because as much as we love beer, even that might be too much for us. The gates opened and a flood of beer lovers entered. We quickly learned that each of the glasses we were given for tasting had a specific pour line. A friend at a brewery gave us a full pour, but we were quickly reprimanded by a lady in an orange shirt for going over the pour line. She instructed us to dump it out, but as she did not designate where, we emptied them into our mouths. Orange shirt lady shook her head and left, and we watched our backs for the rest of the day.
Beer wasn’t the only entertainment at the festival — the folks who put it on did a great job of incorporating food and music. The music sounded great, but it was dulled by the harmonious sound of cups being filled. Even better than the music were the cheese trucks. They were straight-up awesome. We quickly traded cheese for beer, as the guy working (not driving) the truck was thirsty. We ran into friends, co-workers and even a professor or two — all of whom have blurred memories of us.
All in all, there were good things about the festival and there were bad things. But as one of our beer cicerone friends always tells us, “All beers can be boiled down to ‘three ups and three downs.’” So let’s begin with the ups.
Beer Fest is a lot of fun. There are tons of college students, so you run into friends at every turn. There’s unlimited beer and it’s not crap. There’s live music and good food. It’s outdoors — a beautiful location in a city where the weather is never bad. All in all, it has all the makings of a fantastic time.
But alas, onto the negatives.
San Luis Obispo is a college town. It has that reputation. And with college students comes more focus on quantity over quality. The breweries know this, so they tend to send their lighter, more drinkable beer. Alesmith isn’t going to send a keg of Speedway Stout to this Beer Fest because they think it’ll be wasted on frat stars attempting to get the most bang for their buck. To be fair, we are not excusing ourselves from attempting to maximize quantity, though we wish didn’t cost us so much of the quality. That being said, we would be lying if we didn’t tell you that one of us may have been hungover by 5 p.m., so don’t think we are above it all.
But we understood where the brewers were coming from when they left the really good stuff at home. We lose faith when we see a bro wearing a LeBron jersey and a Supersonics hat standing next to his other two bros wearing a LeBron jersey and a D-Wade jersey, all while waiting in line at a great craft beer festival for a freaking taster of Stella Artois. If a brewery has to give away freebies (that aren’t beer … if you forgot, that’s all free), you should probably skip it, cough cough, Shock Top sunglasses.
Though we would love to see one or two rare beers floating around, we know this is not the place for it. Beer Fest did a fantastic job of introducing a ton of people to a lot of fantastic beers, and we had an amazing time. We recommend it to anyone in San Luis Obispo — just be sure to get your tickets before they sell out.
Finally, it’s time for our year-end bottle share. Let’s make our third installment the best one yet. Check our Twitter accounts for details. We’ll also make a Facebook event again under the name “SLO Bottle Share Part 3” and keep it public, so join that, come hang out and try some awesome beer.