Bacon and Beer Classic

My friend and I went to this festival combining beer & bacon on October 10^th — two of my favorite things!
I absolutely loved that was at Soldier Field… I haven’t been there in forever! It was all nicely laid out and of course had ample seating space which is GREATLY appreciated at beer fests. We were general admission which means we had 3 hours to soak in the goodness of the event.
The good of the festival of course was the beer — 44 local (and a bit further out) breweries were in attendance. Each brewery offered 1 – 3 flavors with most having 2 flavors. I was slightly sad because almost every brewery had beers I had already had aka nothing rare or unusual. That being said some breweries had awesome employees there and others had reps who were completely disinterested & miserable. I’m always sad to see the unhappy people because it never bodes well for a brewery!
Lines for beer were usually about 10 people deep but always moved fairly quickly. Lines for food were on another level! Each food line had about 50 people and many were stopped as places ran out of food very early. Most places didn’t have food after the first hour and the ones that did… their lines grew… and grew… and grew! Not worth waiting in a Disneyland-​esque line for a bit of baconwhatevertheyhad. Pass! So the food bit of the admission tix? Not worth it at all. My friend and I tried 3 food bites. We went to Chinatown after because we were starrrrrrrvvvvvvving.
I loved the adorable mini solo cup ceramic taster, loved the Duff Beer Biscuit mix take-​home gift, and we had fun in the photo booth despite the drunkard who refused to get out of our photos until he was escorted off set.
Chicago has about a million beer festivals and I have to say that this was sadly on the weaker end of them. They just didn’t deliver the food to justify their higher-​than-​other beer fest ticket prices. And too many beer spots ran out of brew too early. Fun for a time but probably won’t

The vip tickets were definitely NOT worth it. We will certainly come back coz we love the Bears, but, we’re NOT going to go with the vip tickets. Great location, but there was nothing special about Midway Bar, same teeny mugs for both regular and vip ticket holders, and you can count with one hand the number of booths that actually offered delicious bacon.