Beer Hoptacular

Please don’t say Hoptacular5 in Chicago cost $ 55 when it is $ 67 (21% additional). I understand the $ 3 ticketing fee to Jam Productions, but what’s with the additional $ 6.50 convenience fee & the $ 2.50 Facility Fee?

I made the mistake of purchasing VIP tickets which were overpriced at $ 75 each! I got stuck in traffic driving to the event and missed the 30 minute early entry period for VIP ticket holders. I was promised food pairings and limited release tastings but by the time I entered with the long lines there was nothing available.
I enjoyed tasting the beers and it was great meeting some of the brewers.
The interior location was nice but it was chilly outside at the tent area.

I attended Hoptacular on Friday 11 – 8 for the first time. I really enjoyed it. We arrived at 545pm and wait outside for the doors to open. The folks waiting were friendly so the wait was not bad. They opened the doors promptly at 600. We enjoyed many delicious beers. The brewers were knowledgeable and friendly. They offered lots of cool swag too. There was some food offerings, Chubby Wieners and a tamale vendor (can’t remember the name). I tried both and enjoyed them both. The venue Lacuna Lofts, was awesome. Cool artsy feel, lots of room to roam around. We never wait more than a few seconds in any line. I would recommend the Lacuna lofts as the future locations for all Hoptaculars and I will be there!

My relationship with Beer Hoptacular is complicated. With each sunrise, you get a little rain. Every rose has it’s thorn. Sorry, I momentarily launched into song. It is always super fun, but there is definitely room for improvement. This year’s model was located in Pilsen, which was not geographically desirable at first. Pilsen is kind of interesting though, and it became kind of a field trip. Pilsen seems more spacious than the north side or something. Anyway, we took a school bus from the Roosevelt el to the location. That was strangely fun.
When we arrived I noticed that they had tents set up again, just like last year. Now the problem with tents, is that they are horribly lit with intermittent fluorescent lighting or something. It was also super windy and kind of cold, even in the tent. The sound system was terrible, too. The speakers sounded like the cheapest speakers you can buy and made even Al Green sound like Donald Duck (with soul). That being said, the crowd at these is pretty awesome. Beer nerds are a great group. The lines for tasting portions wasn’t crazy long either. Many had no lines at all. The beer is soooo crazy fresh and mostly great, too.
We realized that we had to use the bathroom, and decided to check out the indoor portion of the fest, which comprised two huge loft spaces. Walking through the door was like entering Oz, everything seemed better and had more color. The lighting in the loft spaces wasn’t great either though. They also had intermittent fluorescent lights, making everyone look a little green or something. It was definitely warmer inside. Ok, now the bathroom situation was terrible. There were a total of 10 port-​a potties outside and 2 stalls inside. The lines for the bathroom began to take over the room inside and the parking lot outside. So please, organizer person, fix that for next year, ok? There’s more to this story, but this is getting too long.
Overall, it was a blast.

So much potential to be a 5 star event. Sample glasses of over 150 beers to try — WOO HOO! But the event was crazy from the beginning. Even with a 1pm start time and a second session at 6pm, the line wrapped around the building, street, corner and a ways. Luckily it moved quickly, but once in the main ballroom with the beer vendors, it was packed. Sardine packed and annoying. It was hard to tell who was in line for a sample and who was just standing in front of the taps blocking others. There was no «flow» at all, and really just too crowded for full enjoyment. They should have not sold so many tickets to the event, period. This also made it, so that some boothes completely ran out of beers I really wanted to taste! Boo hooo. And we were suppose to vote for our favorite beer — but somehow they voted and tallied before the end of the event?! How’s that — How do we have a favorite, when I am not done tasting? I never even saw where I would have turned my vote in. If they announced it, I didn’t hear it. Because of the number of peole and hectic feel, any and all annoucements done on the main stage were lost on me, and my other 6 friends for that matter. Too bad. They either need to make attendance less or keep it the same, but get a larger more spread out venue next year. I will keep the 3 stars though, because it was a great way to try a ton of beer I may otherwise never thought of :)

A great selection of companies present.
It could have been a great event but, there were several things that made me not want to go back next year.
Really crowded; there were a lot of people, i don’t know the logistics but there was a lot people shoving and people overall being jerks.
Scheduling; They let us in late and kicked us out early. We were there early and didn’t get in until almost 20 minutes until after the start time. They also shut down the booths 20 minutes early.
Organization; very disorganized, they had what seemed to be an event on the main stage. When I asked someone who worked there what it was all about he said i don’t know. He offered to let me up on the stage which I graciously accepted and walked around to see a booth with no one present and a bunch of people trying to figure out what was meant to be done with the stage.
The illinois beer society event at garfield park over the summer was better organized and an overall better experience. I would have given it two stars but I had a good time overall so it gets 3 stars.

I went to the second annual Beer Hoptacular with a group of friends and, while we had a lot of fun, there’s definitely room for improvement for next year.
This year there were two session — an afternoon and evening one. We opted for the evening session. Tickets could either be purchased online or at The Vic box office. Buying online would have added about $ 10 to the already non-​insignificant $ 35 ticket price so one of our group was kind enough to purchase all of our tickets at The Vic (which totaled a far more reasonable $ 38.75).
We showed up at The Aragon right at 6 to find a huge line that stretched around the building and down the alley. Fortunately once the doors opened the line moved quickly. ID and ticket checks were a breeze, no one searched our bags and we’d made pretzel necklaces and were slightly worried we’d be hassled for bringing in outside food, but no one said a word.
It turned out those pretzel necklaces were a stroke of genius. Food options inside were very limited and none of the breweries had any sort of palate cleanser. When you’re serving a pale ale AND a porter, it’d be nice to have something to reset your taste buds.
We were very disappointed to find Pyramid brewery already gone by the time our session started. 5 Rabbit and DESTIHL brewery ran out of beer by the end of the night (they ultimately took first and second place, so clearly they were popular but come on — plan better). This was the biggest disappointment — our tickets were as expensive as the earlier session, but some of the breweries clearly hadn’t planned for the crowds (which is odd, because they knew how many tickets were sold). By the end most of the breweries were out of some, if not all of their offerings. While this didn’t spoil the evening, it put a bit of a damper on my enjoyment. I’d still consider going to Beer Hoptacular next year, but I would go to the earlier session.

I came to the 2011 Beer Hoptacular and had a pretty good time. This was their second year and they did pretty well. I heard that last year they had to offer up a ton of last minute free tickets because they couldn’t seem to drum up enough interest. However, this year they sold out a couple days before the event. It was quite packed.
The first drawback I noticed was that they hit you hard for a convenience charge if you didn’t buy tix from the Vic’s box office (with somewhat inconvenient hours). Our group was lucky enough to forgo some of the extra payments by sending a friend to get our tickets for us. We ended up paying $ 38.75 for $ 35 tickets (I’m still not sure why they weren’t just $ 38.75) instead of $ 40-​something online.
The second drawback was the pretty large line to get in. We didn’t really get to our beers until about 6:30pm for an event that started at 6pm. These lines continued inside of the event and were very uncoordinated. Large groups of people stood around in no real order, partially because there wasn’t a lot of room, so it was hard to tell where the lines were. Many people cut by moving from one stand to the next without waiting their turn. It was very unorganized.
Don’t get me wrong. We had a really good time and tried a ton of beer, but there were a number of breweries that ran out of beer way before the end of the second session. For example, 5 Rabbit disappeared less than an hour into the tasting. We also saw a couple others run out of beer as we got there and several open tables that presumably had representation because the map was full. There were no empty spots. So we can only assume the spots were created by a shortage of beer. It was just a bit disheartening since we paid just as much as the first group but got less beer.
I hate to bash it completely, so I’ll end on a high note. I absolutely fell in love with DESTIHL’s Strawberry Blonde Ale and they definitely deserved their Beer of the Year win with their bourbon barrel aged Dosvidanya Russian Imperial Stout. There were also some well known breweries there that brought some lesser known beers. My heart still belongs to Hard Cider. I will always love Magners and Woodchuck, but Crispin kicks their butts. I’m slightly bias as they are a Minneapolis company. Brewery Ommegang surprised me with their delicious Ommegang Abbey Ale and I especially loved Brouwerij Liefmans Liefmans Cuvee Brut, which is a spectacular cherry lambic type beer.