Beertopia

This is THE craft beer festival in Hong Kong, with over 500 beers from around the world, it’s one big happy hoppy party.
This is the festival’s fourth year, and it seems to have found the perfect location at Central Harbourfront. It goes on for a day and a half, from Friday evening to Saturday night. On Friday they offered a limited number of free entries with tattoo. Mind you, they are talking about real tattoo, with needle and ink, of an intoxicated panda, a beer mug or a slice of pizza. There is a line for it, proving that people don’t need to get drunk before tattooing something they may regret.
The venue was great, centrally located, very spacious, with a huge area with picnic tables for people to sit and enjoy their food and drink comfortably and leisurely — totally love that. Also love how I can just walk up to a port-​o-​let without waiting in line! The mood was festive, with pretty girls on tricylces going around offering you a bottle, man on slits walking around and Uncle Sam inviting us to try some American brews. The little brochure they handed out has useful information, suggesting beers to try under different categories: beginners, local, hoppy, crazy…
My main grip is with the tokens. Supposedly, on their website, $ 300 includes admission with 5 tokens, each good for a 4 oz tasting. Additional tokens are $ 100 for 8. However, a few times after they poured and handed me the beer I was told that beer costs 2 or 3 tokens. Not a good surprise. I can understand some beers cost more than the other but this should be made clear up front, with good signage. Or do what other beer fests do, everything is a token but pour size may vary.
On the other hand, after getting used to the token idea, I like its flexibility. You can pay extra tokens to get a flight, a whole bottle or even a hard-​to-​find bomber. Moreover, it’s nice that light drinkers can still come and enjoy with their friends without spending too much.
Talking of pour size — not sure to if it’s the fault of the beer or the pourer, but some beer I get only like 1 oz of beer with over 2 oz of foam. 4 oz is a minuscule pour to begin with.
Also they seriously need to find better beer glasses. The little plastic glass with stem is cute but poorly constructed. Even at the entrance I had to inspect through 10 before I find 2 good ones. And then halfway through our drinking, they started to leak, but the nice guy at BrewDog gave me a new one.