Seattle Scotch & Beer Fest

I had a blast at this festival! Got here with a couple friends at around 8pm and bought some beer tokens along with a liquor token (for the whiskey flight). The only small negative thing I would say about this place is that some of the beer I wanted to try was out (my fault for not coming earlier). Other than that, I absolutely loved my Saturday night. They had an awesome layout, great lighting and really easy to read maps to determine which beer was serving where. I also thoroughly enjoyed the whiskey flight, which consisted of 5 different shots from 5 different distilleries. After we were done with the flight, we went to the «sports bar» and watched a soccer match while drinking a couple Stellas. I really liked the venue and wanted to say, whoever put this festival together did an amazing job. Will be doing this again next year!

Beer and scotch? Keep the pint Stella glass? Yup!
Downside: jacket was stolen from the rack and after trying to contact organizers and location they were of no help. Pretty disappointing event management folks but the premise is fun and atmosphere was decent.
One time attendance is enough to say I’ve done it.

This event is awesome very well run. I really love the VIP it’s a great deal. Come early everything is open.

Come early for the best selection of beer! Decent cider options for me, a non-​beer drinker. Staff is nice to boot! Tip? Get the VIP pass.

Not a bad festival. It’s well worth it to get the VIP badges. We drank around 12 beer tastings, had 5 whiskey tastings, and had 5 scotch tastings for $ 70. Not too bad.
The beer selection is good, but not that great. There were several hoppy beers, but we expected more.
Will go again next year, and will probably do the VIP again.

Great layout, food trucks, wine, scotch, whiskey, cocktails, beer, cooking demonstrations, great audio/​visual set up and more! Great price for what you get!!!

Get here early and buy a VIP pass. Scope out the selections you want to try in the brochure they hand out FIRST and then go sample.
This year, they did an INCREDIBLE job with the mood lighting and music. Most of the time you could easily hear the people your with and it was a good mix of music; no specific genres.
The event staff are super knowledgeable, friendly and helpful. It’s a big place! But the restrooms were marked with a huge neon sign so they were easy to find. I also thought it was awesome that they had huge screen tv’s for people to watch the basketball and soccer games.
I would have appreciated more close-​by food take-​out options though. There was one food truck outside in the courtyard and one up two streets, but that was it.

Horrible staff, overpriced beer and overall a horrible experience unless you are a 22 year old douchebag with no alcohol experience. Fremont used to be a nice place until the «WOO“crowd started to flock this quiet and eclectic area of Seattle.

So my friends and I all thought we were getting Scotch, after all the festival is call «HopScotch», not «Hop». But it turns out that the tokens are only good for beer & wine. You have to pay a lot extra if you want the Scotch Sampler. I don’t drink any beer and as for wines, I only drink dessert wines, which they did not have. So I was stuck walking around with an empty glass all night.
The volunteer website says «Free admission to the event, including a commemorative tasting glass and five tasting tokens»
Notice it only says «tokens», not «beer/​wine» tokens. The name implies you get scotch & nowhere in the name does it even mention wine.
I did enjoy my volunteer supervisors and the fact that there were snacks (Qdoba chips & salsa, SIFF popcorn, chance to win Seattle Weekly snacks or other prizes on Friday. However on Saturday when I arrived at 7pm they were all out. That’s 5 hours before the event ended!
The floor was incredibly sticky, and it was sticky before the event even started. It was also insanely crowded.
Things I liked about the event: the posters and coasters, commemorative tasting glass, and all the great people

Was pretty cool. Paid $ 30 advance to get 10 5 oz tastes of beer or wine. Nice big venue but kinda crowded though. Wish they would have had some kind of entertainment. Lot’s of breweries I have never heard of before but not of them were anything to rave about.

Niiiiiiice!!! Heineken booth workers sucked. But the event as a whole was cool as heck!

In full disclosure, this is a review of last year’s festival. I was encouraged to write a review because I noticed the next one is coming up. Last year, I psyched up a bunch of folks to go to this. We were ready to drink and be merry. When we got inside they asked us if we wanted the whiskey card. It was $ 30 more! I must have missed the fine print (and I always read the fine print) that said Hop Scotch was just Hop unless you also bought Scotch. Alright, my bad. When we got inside they were playing music that made me wish I had the pain tolerance to murder my ears. The breweries and wineries were pretty cool. The crowd was way too intense for the amount of drinking everyone was doing. We still laugh about how horrible it was. But we laugh, so that’s worth a star.

Lindsey’s review was great. Love the idea of Hop Scotch, love the posters, love alcohol… love being able to taste test.
But it WAS super uncomfortably crowded, and at one point I got smacked on the head with a rolled up poster (purposefully) by some drunken frat boy who couldn’t handle his liquor and then asked «What are you gonna do about it»? Screw you, frat boy. Go back home and go choke on your bud lite.
But that is besides the point. Glad this festival is so big now, and it was well run and organized, but I strongly 2^nd Lindsey S’s suggestion they need to:
1) Move this festival OUTSIDE or
2) Move this festival somewhere bigger or
3) Damn at least have some decent lighting so I’m not stepping in the inevitable sloshings of beer.
ALL the staff was great and friendly — loved that they rinsed out your sample cup between samples, Theo’s chocolates was there and super yum… more food samples would be great, actually.
They should have a voting option where everyone can vote for their top 1 – 3 fav beers! That would be fun.

I was severely dissappointed with this festival…
Perhaps I’m not the demographic they were trying for? Perhaps they wanted the 21 – 24 year olds instead? Hmm who knows.
92.5 was there playing awful music, and I’m OK with all types of music but it’s not the «beer-​fest» typs of music I would have expected.
The room was way too crowded, I was literally shoulder to shoulder with people and then people just stop dead in their tracks to drink and talk. They should really move to a bigger location or make it an outdoors event :(
Perhaps it was my fault for assuming that there would be more smaller breweries and more ‘new’ beer choices, but I felt like I’ve tried all the beers there except for maybe 8, and all the big named breweries brought their popular beers, which seems to defeat the purpose of a beer festival. I mean, I can go out and easily find Widmer Hefe or Kona’s Wailua… give me seasonals and rare beers! The tight quarters and music really put a damper on the event for me, and I was only there for a half hour max. Not pleased.
I did enjoy the locals there, Lazy Boy and I’ve never heard of 192 (who is from Kenmore, weird!) so that was neat. I would say the best drink I tasted was the Pinot Gris from Eleven Winery from Bainbridge Island. Or maybe Anchor’s Porter.
The vendors and volunteers were all super nice and helpful with any questions I had!
Bold Hat/​Hop Scotch, please re-​think music choices as well as the location or layout.

$ 30 bought me a 5 oz. tasting glass and 10 beer/​wine tasting tokens. I tried to take ‘notes’ as I was sampling various alcohols to keep track of my favorites. A careful dissection of my hieroglyphic scratch revealed approving: ‘mmmms, gurgles, and noms’ for the hop-​ridden WTF, Experimental IPA, and Mactarnahan’s Amber. That and apparently the best thing about 192 Brewing company’s Granny’s Apple Ale was: «the hot blond serving it» since it tasted like «toilet water» to my discerning 3-​sheets-​deep palate. The Wailua Wheat was simply labeled: «chicken.» WowY wow drunken past Hayley, present Hayley thanks you for your valuable insight!
I also vaguely recall a security officer asking me if everything was alright after catching me dancing (i.e. flailing) about ‘too wildly’ to bad 90s music in the center of the venue…

Oh. It should be mentioned that the five star review here was one of the promoters.
I thought that this mention would be a timely update as this isn’t appearing in the search engine.
I heard no less than three tales of «why didn’t I hear how much it sucked this year!» from people who attended. They’re up to the same stuff.

I’m going to go further than the Ians and do a 180 here. I respectfully and completely disagree with their assessment of Hop Scotch. I was there on Saturday (perhaps they attended on Friday?) and I couldn’t have had more fun. The music was great, the tastings new and different, and I thought the venue was pretty flippin’ sweet.
Let’s be honest: when it comes to beer festivals, you just don’t get any better than the Fremont Oktoberfest, and since the company who puts that on is the same that created Hop Scotch, I applaud the liquor-​centricity of the event. Everyone’s been to a beer festival, but how many people do you know who have been to a liquor-​tasting party?
I suppose that if your name is Ian, and if you are part of a small percentage of people who are legitimate beer and/​or Scotch snobs, you might wish for a little more selection. In which case, I advise you to go to the liquor store and buy all the Scotch you want, and then see how far 30 bucks will get you. For that matter, go to a bar and time how long it takes you to spend that much money on generic beer — tax and tip will put you over almost immediately. I don’t understand the complaints about the value. I had a fun night, got my buzz on, and «oh mah gaw,» I actually learned something about what I was drinking!

The moment that a gentleman wearing a backward baseball cap cocked to the side approached our group, I knew that this was a very different beast than the Serious Beer Festivals I’d attended previously.
This was not a beer festival. It was some kind of confused pop culture mashup featuring loud 80s music, corporate backing, a lot of gel, and far too many attractive, coiffed girls for a beer festival, unfortunately most of whom were busy saying «Oh mah gawd!» or otherwise participating in some sort of high school antics. The huge space was darkened, almost like some sort of dysfunctional nightclub. The scotch tasting was very disappointing, complete with robotic Johnnie Walker rep giving the same spiel she’d given 200 times, staring off into space as though this speech tortured her dreams. Thanks for lifting the sprit, hon, eh?
As for the beer and scotch. Well, there was nothing really exotic there as far as beers go. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale? Hmm, what’s that like? Manny’s Pale Ale? Mac & Jack’s Amber? What _​ARE_​these mysterious brews? If you’re well versed in the brews of the region, you won’t get much out of it, but since I am still tasting my way around the Pacific Northwest, I did get to try a few that I hadn’t had before, which I always enjoy. There were a couple of tasty scotches, from what I could tell from the eyedropper-​full of scotch that we got to sample. And, really, how seriously can you take a scotch tasting that includes Johnnie Walker Red? The entire scotch tasting was designed as a lead-​up to Johnnie Walker Green (you’re supposed to taste it last), which was underwhelming after a couple of the single malts, which had real character. The idea of this being a real scotch tasting was a sham, and felt like a shill for Johnnie Walker. I could feel His Corporateness looking over my shoulder as sampled each of the scotches.
I did find a couple beers that would be worthy of buying, and learned of the existence of an interesting scotch or two. This was, however, the Hard Way to discover these things. Save your $ 30 and wait for the brewer-​sponsored and WABL-​produced festivals that follow within a couple months.