I know, I know… If you were there, you probably aren’t going to hear anything you don’t already know. And if you weren’t there, well, attending beerfests vicariously through a blog post is not exactly living la vida cerveza. But nonetheless, I’m going to go ahead and ramble a bit about my impressions, the beers I tried and liked, and there are at least two reasons to delve deeper into this post than the front page excerpt: I must of course report on the winner of the raffle, and the winner of the BOV vote. On the way, I’ll probably touch on a few things you may have missed, so read on…

First of all, I think from a logistics point of view, this year’s fest was in most ways much better organized than last year’s. In particular, the bathroom scene was most certainly better, and I heard no complaints there. In general, in fact, the utilization of the outdoor space really created more efficient traffic flow indoors, and also considerably fewer bodies inside at any one time, making navigating the crowd far less arduous than last year. The token system certainly seemed ahead of time to be something of a turn-off for some people, but as it worked out was hardly worth worrying about. Pours were pretty generous, and dropping your tokens in the bucket was, at some stations, harder than getting your beer. So I think overall, the things people feared the most turned out not to be a big deal.

On the negative side, however, a few elements might have been cause for some consternation. Things got off to a slightly later start than was anticipated, due largely to a late delivery of the ice which the brewers needed to keep the beers cool to serve. Ultimately, because the ice was late, rather than doors opening at 1:00 and taps turning on at 2:00, the whole thing was moved up- doors & taps opened up around 2:00. Not perhaps something which ruined anyone’s day, but certainly when things don’t go according to schedule, people get anxious.

The only other comment I heard on the negative tip was some people’s despair about brewers who didn’t show, or who didn’t bring enough beer to make it through the entire fest. Indeed, at least one brewer was out by 4:30, which I can certainly agree is a bit of a poor showing. On the other hand… you know it starts at 2:00, right? By 5 to 5:30, things very well ought to be slowing down, and the idea is to get people pretty much out the doors by 6:00, so that real cleanup can begin by 6:30. Keep in mind that the staffers are all volunteers, and they spend a fair amount of time after we leave making the place look good again; I can certainly appreciate that they’d like to get on with it. That said, I think it is a delicate balance to strike- you want to have beer all the way through to at least 5:30, but you really don’t want to take any back with you. Ideally, your taps run dry at 5:45 on the nose, but that’s not entirely easy to achieve. I guess to sum up, I hope next year the brewers do anticipate the numbers we get at this festival and supply–and pour–accordingly.

Still, overall I think we’re sitting on a really good festival here in Buffalo, one which has the potential to be one of those top-tier festivals with another couple of years at this site under its belt. We certainly have the numbers, now all we need to do is net about 50% more breweries and we’ll be even more of a destination than we are already. As it was, we spotted license plates from as far as Florida in the lot, so we’re already drawing a pretty decent beer-geek-touring crowd.

Working the festival, I certainly didn’t get to sample as widely as I’d have otherwise- but then again, there weren’t too too many beers there I’d never had. The brews that really grabbed me were all otherwise unavailable. Kudos to Flying Bison for their collaborative effort with High Falls in a cask-conditioned Belgian Dubbel. Although the volunteer who poured mine was a little hard on the beer engine, when the foam subsided I found myself in possession of a fantastic take on the style. Hard to evaluate the head given the pour, but the foam led to great lacing all the way down the sample, right on-style. The color was a hazy orange-brown. Aroma-wise, the beer gave off a slight clove nose with plenty of banana, bolstered by solid bready malt and nary a trace of hop aroma. The sip began with noticeable light carbonation and flavors of spice (clove again, and pepper), bold rum-raisin fruit, and led to a slightly biscuit malt middle. The finish lingers with slight alcohol flavor enveloped in more dark fruit. This beer compared favorably with the classics, evoking, more than anything, Chimay Red for me.

The second beer that rocked my ‘buds was the Randall-ized J.W. Dundee’s Pale Ale. Out of the bottle, this is a solid pale ale, on the hop-tip, yet easy drinking, a session beer for sure. Running the beer through a few pounds of Amarillo hops, essentially dry-hopping it on-the-fly, transformed this beer into a real beer of note. All those hops add considerable aroma to the beer, and since aroma is a huge part of the taste, it is no lie to say this is an entirely different beer. It poured out a beautiful golden color, with a three-finger head that settled languidly. The aroma was just jam-packed with citrus, complimenting the Cascades already deployed for aroma in the beer- the freshness was a real wallop. Turning to the taste, an initial hop bite containing grapefruit in abundance and some pine resin as well was followed up with a nice crystal malt center, slight toast but hardly noticeable behind even hops which come to the fore in the finish before leaving with a snap. The medium body and medium carbonation served the hops well in this one.

Finally, as was the case last year, the Polish mead, Kurpiowski,, was outstanding. They only brought the one type this year, which is brewed high-strength at a 1:2 water to honey ratio, with additions of spices and black currant juice, judiciously used. It is visible in the color, which was auburn with some near-purple highlights. The mead had a very strong sweetness in the nose, though the hint of spice (caraway?) and oak helped a bit to add some dimensionality to it, still, cloying is the word. The still (some meads are semi-still or outright carbonated) mead washed over the palate activating sweetness detectors in abundance, strongly honey-flavored but here as in the aroma, spices and a touch of berries lent some depth. The alcohol leaves clear warming at the finish, which lingers long due to the sweetness. Unlike some other types of meads, when you think of this one, think of port. This would pair very well with a humble bowl of Ben & Jerry’s vanilla. Stawski’s other offerings included the justifiably famous Okocim Porter (have one, seriously), which was great to have, and some solid Czech options for those that would like to expand their pilsner horizons beyond the ol’ Urquell.

So, there’s the roundup… A few beers I wish I’d managed to check out- I didn’t get over to the Erie booth at all, for shame, nor the Lake Placid for beer, though I did talk to the reps for a bit beforehand. Sorry, guys- we’ll just have to come to the brewery, eh? Though I’ve had it and enjoyed it, I didn’t manage to get a Saranac Imperial IPA―another BOV road-trip, I think―nor did I sample one of my all-time favorite IPAs, Brooklyn’s East India Pale Ale. Oh the stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth-hoppiness of that one- damn! I didn’t even manage to grab a sausage from Ulrich’s- for shame.

Anyway, on to the winners portion of the program. We raised some bucks for the CTRC and the BSHC, and gave a fine bottle of Special Edition Abt 12 to one R.M. Doran, of Alfred State U- dude had one big shiner, too, and wasn’t at all ashamed about it it, seemed. I hope it was good- I mean the beer, not the fight.

As for the balloting… Well, we didn’t get back 100’s, just 54 in fact, which in the end was a good good thing, as tabulating Instant Runoff Voting (IRV; here’s my favorite explanation using muppets for illustrative purposes) ballots when there are 23 candidates turns out to be a big pain in the butt (H/T Mrs. BOV for forcing Excel to our will on the tabulations). I am a serial multi-tasker, so I really wanted to use the balloting as both a fun, informal thing to add to the party but also, an opportunity to push my favorite electoral reform concept in the form of IRV. However, with that many choices to rank, in each round, breweries that were eliminated before keep popping back in, and a lot of ballots get ’spoiled’ (in the IRV sense, not like your ballots often are in the current system.) Which is to say, it took well over 15 rounds to determine that Flying Bison was the winner, which was already pretty clear in round one were they already had twice as many votes as the next closest brewery, Harpoon. The second last brewery to be eliminated in the runoff was Elicottville, the thrid last was Harpoon, and before them, Ommegang. If you look at the rankings just for #1 votes, the order is Flying Bison(16); Ommegnag(8); Harpoon(7) and Ellicottville(5)- they did well with 2nd, 3rd and 4th rankings, obviously. Finally, if you look at all votes/rankings, Flying Bison wins again with 24, followed by Ellicottville with 18; Ommegang with 15; Harpoon with 13, Ithaca with 12 and Southern Tier with 11- the others only garnered 6 or fewer total rankings. I just love data- can’t you tell?

With respect to the voting for individual beers, IRV was out of the question- far too many choices. Using a strict #1 vote tabulation, the clear winner (of this time 55 total ballots) was Okocim Porter, which managed to get 5 votes. Harpoon’s UFO and Flying Bison’s Aviator Red both garnered 4 votes, and not other single beer got more than 2 votes total.

In sum, for next year we’ll probably think to have drop-boxes near the exit so you don’t have to come back to the BOV table to vote; we’ll have the ballots in the cups at the start; and we’ll probably just go ahead and use the standard model for tabulating, which won’t mean a clear, 50%+ winner will emerge, but will take a lot less time to count at least. Lessons, lessons…

That’s a wrap on the Brewfest post. Naturally, we have some hour+ of footage to edit down now as well, so we’ll get that up as soon as is truly feasible.

Sláinte!