Fresh Hop Shortage
Portland, OR–Hop heads not arriving in the first few hours and willing to tolerate long lines in a cramped venue experienced little bounty. Hopefully in the future, better planning will accommodate beer enthusiasts unable to arrive at at the very beginning of a nine hour festival. We arrived midway through the festival, not expecting every beer to still be available, but certainly hoping for a semblance of selection. A better option for those wanting a more comfortable, affordable, and bountiful experience would be to visit places like Belmont Station, Bailey’s Taproom, or the HorseBrass Pub. Many local brewpubs still have their fresh hop offerings available.
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4 Comments
Agreed. Lucky Lab 2006 was the best. You were able to get beer, the servers were friendly and not just pushing beer, atmosphere, etc. I went to last years and was dismayed at the lines as they were rivaling that of OBF. I skipped this year and have no plans to attend again. Looks like I made the right choice.
I tried to avoid the crowds by getting there early, but at 12:20 the line was almost a block long. After the crowds last year I was surprised to hear it would be some place smaller, more so to find it in just the parking lot. I got to try all the beers I was interested in, but this event is definitely a victim of its success.
What bothered me the most is that they weren’t telling people there were virtually no fresh-hop beers left as they entered and there were no signs either. I think there was one fresh hop beer left when I got there — they had replaced the rest of the taps with normal Hopworks beers. I feel like this takes advantage of those who don’t spend their lives thinking about beer; “normal” people who just wanted to go to a beer festival now think they had fresh-hop beers when in a lot of cases, they haven’t.