North Carolina Brewers And Music Festival

First timer here, and I enjoyed it even when the weather god didn’t give us his 100% support. I was last minute with my decision in joining my friends (and some coworkers) for the festivities. Ticket was $ 30, which includes all you can taste beer for almost 4 hours. Frankly that’s the main reason I caved in. The other event option of that day is the Beer, Bourbon & BBQ at South Park for about the same admission. Since I never have good experience with events at South Park location, Rural Hill I went.
First of all the location is cool. I know there were other events hosted at Rural Hill, but this was my first time being here. It’s about 30 minutes away from home, but it felt like a world away. Plenty of free parking, good start. I parked closer to the festival, but there was another entrance for the camping crowd.
There were about 18 breweries listed on the event website, and quite frankly I didn’t count. Let’s just say there were plenty of choices. I went for the short lines, which tends to be breweries from other places. I don’t understand why would anyone line up for the breweries based in Charlotte… hmm… I can just drive to them and drink.
I had an awesome Tripel Belgium Ale called Devils Tramping Ground from Aviator Brewing Company. I was quite impressed by the NC breweries showing. There was also a home-​brew tent, and I tried some interesting things there too (including a ginger cider, a toffee stout or was it a porter).
This was also a music festival, but unfortunately I was too consumed by the brew part and my friends ended up chilling by the campfire and I totally missed the bands… which is a small regret on my end.
There definitely will be a next time!

Myself, some friends and several other thousands of people stopped by the 2^nd annual North Carolina Brewers and Music Festival and it was a very well attended event for certain. The location of Rural Hill was a great selection for them because of all the open space it provided for people to move around. It’s remote location and many acres let people pretty much have the run of the property and you didn’t get that somewhat kettle’d in feeling that the Octoberfest can bring on. The food vendors they had were pretty limited with there only being a hot dog stand, hamburger stand and I believe a BBQ stand but amazingly enough they didn’t seem to run out of food (while we were there) so if you wanted to grab a bite to eat there was at least food to be had. There was also the music/​bands on the main stage but I’d say about 80% of the attendees were only there for the beer tasting. They seemed to do a very good job of representing a lot of North Carolina Brewers and there were probably about 12 – 14 tents up handing out the samples of sweet hoppy deliciousness.
I gotta get on to the reason I only gave this event 3 stars though and that is because of the poor event planning that seemed to go into this with regards to being able to accommodate the large crowd they had. My friends had prepaid tickets and I decided I would just eat the additional 5 $ charge and get my ticket at the gate for the beer tasting. We probably showed up at around 130 and the line for tickets was at least 150 people deep. They seemed to do a pretty good job of moving the line along but mid way through a woman came out and announced that they were no longer selling tickets for the beer sampling because they were afraid the beer vendors would run out of beer. Right then and there many people just peeled out of the line and went on their merry way to other probably anywhere else the could get a cold draft. With my friends already inside I was pretty much committed to the event or else I would have up and left myself but I figured what the hell. I’ll just pay the 20 $ and claim designated driver rights so my friends can have a good time. Once inside it was amazing to see the lines at the beer tents. They were probably at least 100 people in each line and moving rather slowly. I tagged along with my friends as they hit each of the tents in succession. The vendors would give you a small plastic cup and for your sample you’d have probably 4 ounces. Nothing unreasonable there or anything you wouldn’t expect for a beer sampling but after you had hit one vendor you would have to immediately go to the next line and begin your wait all over again. From what I could tell they probably needed at least double the number of beer tents to support the number of people they had in attendance. We ended up leaving after the last of the free tastings came and went and by that time most of the beer vendors had packed up and left because they ran out of product to hand out. Oh yeah, and the first keg was kicked probably around 3pm and that just added to the other lines becoming longer.
Overall, it is a great idea for a event (weather permitting as always) for people who like to get out for a beer tasting. I’m sure the promoters will rave about it being a roaring success but when you have people being turned away at the gate or having to spend 30 $-35 $ just to stand in line all day it comes off as kind of «ehh». Until they get a better handle on how many people will be in attendance and scale the event to suit everyone I’d say it’s a flip of the coin on whether or not you should check it out.
Lastly, mad props to the Lonerider folks. They seemed to have a endless supply of beer and their staff was keeping the cups topped off and line moving as fast as they possibly could.