07 Dec 2nd Annual Taps & Touchdowns An Excellent Kickoff To Championship Weekend
I remember the first beer festival I ever attended: Indiana Microbrewers Festival in 2012. I was new to craft and microbrew beer and really only knew that I liked a few Sun King brews. My main goal for the beer fest was to consume as much alcohol as possible in 4 hours. Over the 3 years since that festival, my affinity for local microbrew beer has blossomed greatly. You won’t find me drinking anything produced by the big 3 breweries and you’ll rarely find me drinking anything brewed outside of Indy (unless I’m traveling). Fortunately, a lot of other Hoosiers have also taken a liking to the local beer scene, so the number of breweries and beer festivals in Indiana has grown quite rapidly in recent years.
Since that first experience I’ve been to a total of nine Indianapolis festivals over three years. I’ve been to inaugural festivals (CANvitational, Whitestown Beer Fest) and veteran festivals (20th annual Microbrewers) alike. My intentions during each attendance has slowly evolved from drink as much as possible to visit specific breweries and try specific beers. As I migrated to the latter, I really started to pay close attention to the festival organization. Any festival full of beer can get you drunk, but only a properly planned festival can let you execute your planned strategy for brewery visits and specific beer sampling.
This was the second Taps and Touchdowns beer festival, but my first visit; my expectations were moderate. This isn’t a first time festival, so they should have things figured out from an organizational standpoint, but I didn’t expect too much in terms of planning.
I must say I was pleasantly surprised.
The next category that I commonly judge a festival on is swag. I like brewery koozies as much as the next guy, but it’s nice to get something new as a part of your festival experience. This festival brought a unique aspect to the swag game, even if it was unintentional. The stamps that I previously mentioned were the size of a dime and contained each brewery’s logo and name. They are a great size to go on your phone or phone case.
One area I’ve never considered judging a fest on is area to congregate. Typically they are crowded and you just drink while walking from brewery to brewery. This fest had a large center area with picnic tables and bar height tables for standing. It was definitely a nice touch.
In my opinion, for a fest in its second year, it was well planned and executed. As I mentioned, I only got to attend for 90 minutes. I managed to visit every brewery I wanted, and could have easily visited every brewery at least once if I stayed the full 3.5 hours. It’s well worth attending, and I look forward to attending for the full time in year 3. Alas, in my opinion, there are some areas for improvement for year 3:
- list of beers that will be at the festival
- a way to take notes on that stamp card and/or listing all the specific beers on the card and allowing you to get multiple stamps from each brewery next to the specific beer
- I would have loved the option to get a sheet that contained a sticker from each brewery.
- Also about that sticker system, each brewery was assigned a number on the sticker sheet, but it wasn’t displayed at the brewery station at the fest. Some breweries knew their number while others did not. I suspect the one that I visited that didn’t know learned it as the night went on. Next year I’d love to see the brewery’s name at the table associated with its sticker card number.
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