03 Feb All Quiet On The Beer Front: The Day Before Winterfest
What a difference a day makes. Early into the Friday afternoon before the 7th annual Indiana Brewers Guild’s Winterfest, I walked into the Champions Pavilion expecting to see dozens of trucks rolling in through any of the many garage doors, pulling up to their assigned spots among the array of squared-out blocks of long folding tables, trundling out their wares and setting up their lines and taps for tomorrow’s big day.
What I got instead was an enormous echo chamber. As I stood in the vast open space of the pavilion, I could easily stand at one corner, and (although it required squinting) I could see clear across a space that – at a rough “guestimation” – probably ran the length of three or four football fields (and that was just one side of the pavilion, to boot). For the next fifteen minutes I ambled about the space, running my index finger along the table tops, looking for some sort of activity: maybe a couple master brewers trading recipes by the restroom entrances to my right, or maybe an assistant brewer fiddling with a coupler by the concessions area to my left…
Nothing.
Obviously, this wasn’t what I was hoping would happen. I was expecting to walk into the throng and thrum of chaos and excitement which I had spent the previous week imagining…a spectacle sort of like those children’s books I used to read describing the circus on set-up day. But 24.5 hours before the biggest craft-beer event on this side of the Vernal Equinox, I saw long tables set up end-to-end with black, wooden folding chairs neatly placed on top of them.
It was a strangely awesome moment.
This is not to say that I didn’t run into to some people. Jason Larrison of the Beer Geeks commented on some of the stark differences between setting up the Winterfest as opposed to its summer counterpart at the Optimist Park in Broad Ripple:
“Here at the Fairgrounds,” he said, “they [State Fairgrounds Staff] control a lot more of the activity.” Larrison went on to note that the banners hanging about the venue are according to fairgrounds edicts, and further pointed out that all of the custodial work is handled by Fairgrounds staffers.
“It makes things a lot easier,” he added reminding me that the set up at the summer event involved snaking tables through tight paths in the woods on golf carts and sometimes across the shoulders as well.
As Larrison continued to dart back and forth throughout the building coordinating every small detail for the next day, other volunteers gathered near a row of tables making a few final adjustments, and enjoying a box of Flat 12’s as their day’s work wound down. Rich Baker, a Beer Geek who has volunteered for every Winterfest, acknowledged that what drives him to come donate his time (besides the free admission he gets in return) is his mutual enthusiasm for craft beer we all share and “the feeling that I’m a part of the experience.”
“There’s going to be 102 breweries here,” he said, sweeping his hand across the sea of concrete in front of us. “Those that are worth their salt are going to be around for a long time, and this is an exciting time to be a part of the craft beer experience.”
After wandering around for an interminable length of time: reading the newly hung banners, taking pictures of the old men hanging the banners, reading the banners again, taking pictures of the Geeks setting up the boxes filled with those little 4-ounce glasses, reading the banners again, taking a pee or two, reading the banners one more time… finally… a brewery showed up.
“Last summer was our first festival in Indy,” Zakrzewski said. “We got a lot of love from Indy, and that’s encouraged us to invest even more down here. People are loving us down here, and we’re loving them back.”
And if there’s a way for a brewing company to manifest an abstraction such as the communal love which is blossoming in the craft beer scene, it’s in the form of beer. The boys from Burn ‘Em then proceeded to set up three long coolers sporting 26 taps…26. I would learn the next day that a few other breweries also brought big numbers, with one even clearing 30. But watching those young fellows bust their chops, getting their booth ready for their big day in a key venue, and seeing their work resonate with a passion for the complete brewing experience won me over. Before they had served their first draw, before they had scribbled the first beer on their whiteboard, they had won a loyal fan. I made a mental note to check them out the next day, and I followed through on that promise. They didn’t disappoint.
More on that in my next piece.
Tristan
Posted at 02:50h, 03 FebruaryThanks for joining us, and for noticing how neatly the chairs were stacked 🙂