Big Texas Beer Fest

I spent last weekend in Dallas, and thought I would share it with you. I am sort of sharing out of order. Next time, I'll tell you what I did Friday.

If you saw my pictures on the 14th, you noticed that I attended the Big Texas Beer Festival. Overall, I had a great time.  There was a exceptional selection of craft beer. I noticed the shortest lines at Blue Moon and Shock Top, which I would have expected. It was gratifying to see that the lines at the Texas Beer booths seemed to be the longest.

I do have some complaints, though.

First, as the line for VIP admission snaked around the building, it was obvious that a large number of folks bought VIP tickets. One guy making the hike to the end of the line elicited a laugh from all of us when he said, "I guess I'm not as important as I thought I was." By 12:10, the line finally started moving, and by 12:40, I was inside the building, leaving me only 20 minutes for the exclusive tastings. I don't know if paying $20 a minute was a wise move, but I tried to squeeze an hour of drinking into twenty minutes.

Second, the venue was huge, but the booths weren't arranged well. By 4 pm, when all the riff raff were in the building, and lines for the Texas beers reached fifty or sixty people, it was difficult to navigate. The place looked to me to be big enough to arrangle the booths in a single line back to back. That might have made the navigation a bit easier.

Third, did I mention the venue was huge? To steal a quote from The Blues Brothers, it was "a fucking barn." Now that's great for the large number of attendees, the acoustics sucked, and the live bands (Fish Fry Bingo and The O's) sounded like shit. Perhaps they shouldn't have had their amps turned to 11 (that's a discussion for the sound guy), but it was hard to hear the words to the songs. That's not to say the bands were bad.  They were really good. I even bought their albums on iTunes. (I just wish I could have found "When the Sh*t Goes Down". You just don't hear jug bass anymore.)

Fourth, and this is nothing the organizers could control, but only three food trucks showed up. Apparently several more who had said they would be there decided they didn't need the money from people who needed food to soak up beer.

Will I be back next year? More than likely. I had a very good time!