Bulova Watch Time: Beer forty five

I should preface my thoughts on the Toronto Festival of Beer by saying that I’ve never actually managed to get to the Toronto Festival of Beer before, despite living in the city for the majority of my adult life. In fact, prior to this year the only beer festival that I had been to was the Mondiale de la Biere in Montreal. From listening to people talk about the TFOB, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that it’s basically a frat party. The phrases that I have heard various people (some of whom are brewers) use are “Drunk Tank” “Gong Show” and “Do I have to go again this year?” It’s difficult to walk into a situation like this without a certain amount of wary prejudice, given that a number of people whose opinions I respect are dismissive of the festival.

It’s not as though they haven’t had time to reach these conclusions and then repeatedly test them. This was the 16^th year for the Toronto Festival of Beer, so the majority of the people I had talked to about it before hand had been several times over the years. For that reason, I made it my mission to walk around with an open mind in order to see whether the negative reputation was deserved.

The first thing that became immediately apparent was that the festival is timed a certain way. I went on Thursday, so the hours for the day were 4-10 PM: It’s not an all day event. You’re really looking at about six hours of festival per day, and while the Saturday and Sunday hours are 1-7 PM, the amount of time that it’s open is relatively small. On Thursday, we didn’t actually get in until closer to 5:00, so realistically it was only a five hour festival.

It seems to me that this is a measure designed to be a deterrent to those over-enthusiastic partakers who are likely to end up spilling their beer or some other substance all down their shirt fronts. Hanging around with some friends who were also attending the festival it became obvious that there were a number of other safety measures built in to the festival. The yellow shirted “Alcohol Enforcement” personnel drifted gently about censuring anyone who happened to be holding two glasses. While it’s not necessarily a bad idea to restrict people to one cup at a time, it becomes an issue if you’re holding a cup for someone who has to use the port-a-john and suddenly find yourself accused of malfeasance and dereliction of human decency. Theoretically, in order to accede to the wishes of the yellow shirts, you need to either take your beer with you into the cubicle  or leave it outside with the possible consequence that someone will swipe it. That may not sound likely, but since a replacement cup costs twenty bucks, it’s certainly a worry.

To give you some idea of the prohibitive measures in place, a friend of mine reported that he had seen a sign on the way in to the festival reading “Public Urination Will Not Be Tolerated.” While I’m all in favour preventing people from stepping discreetly into the hedge to answer the call of nature, the fact that a sign is required for the purpose tells you a lot about the crowd that’s drawn to the event.

Local Hat Enthusiast, Gandalf the Grey

The crowd seems to be pretty gung ho about event participation. There were beer enthusiasts with silly hats, which is all well and good (and even, as it turns out a pretty good way to break the ice with just about everyone) but there were also people with outfits that would have made Randy “The Macho Man” Savage look like a banker. These are people who have come out to the festival with the apparent purpose of not actually remembering the visit.

It’s interesting, though, to observe some of the changes that must have happened in the last couple of years. While there was the excellently designed Budweiser section (replete with travelling festival wagon/pub) the large breweries really didn’t take up a huge amount of acreage. They were over in the corner. The focus in terms of both space and content seemed to be on the OCB, which has got to be a good thing. They were all located in front of the bandshell at a distance that wouldn’t cause permanent hearing loss. The majority of them had their core lineups of beers available, which is exactly what you want in a situation like this: Relatively light, refreshing beverages for hot summer days. There’s even the possibility that if the crowd tries your beer early in the proceedings, they might remember that they like it. There’s the very real possibility of converting people to your product. I’m forced to concede that it’s unlikely if it’s someone wearing a neon green shock wig under a straw cowboy hat, but the remote possibility exists.

Gearing up for CASKAPALOOZA!

Some Ontario brewers were even having fun with the event. Flying Monkeys has a number of one offs for the occasion including a raspberry porter which, while it’s pretty syrupy, manages to taste a little like a sacher torte or black forest cake. I talked with Peter Chiodo, and it seemed to me that while he was proud of it, he was also in the process of refining the recipe for later use. Great Lakes had an entire wall of casks for their CASKAPALOOZA zone, including a couple of varieties that I hadn’t tried before including their Windy City Pale Ale (complete with floating pieces of hops) and Sweet Pete’s Peach Wheat which is very easy drinking, although I think it might benefit from a hint more tartness on the next go round.

For all that there were maniacs in wigs and fluorescent shirts staggering determinedly to the next booth, there were also people taking a reasonable, cultivated approach to the event. One of the things that I hadn’t expected was Mirella Amato’s Girl’s Guided Beer Tour. Now, it was only available on Thursday, but it was interesting to watch some of it. Instead of showing up at the festival and wasting time trying to figure out where everything was and what was worth trying (a problem for everyone regardless of gender), the women on the tour got some direction and some information about the health benefits of beer and the styles of beer they were drinking; Most importantly, everyone seemed to be having fun doing it. I’m generally in favour of anything that gets more women to drink beer, so it was nice to see that this worked so well.

As the evening drew to a close, a serious problem became apparent, and it was mostly logistical. Beer Tokens were being advertised as available in packages of five or twenty, essentially working out to a dollar a token. While that’s pretty reasonable, it’s hard to get through twenty samples of beer in five hours. Since the tokens are non-refundable, you’ve pretty much got to use them up which meant that toward 10 PM when the taps stopped pouring, people started to throw tokens at just about anything available. People were trading tokens for cigarettes or just handing them off on their way out the door. It began to feel like control of the event was slipping away. I think that given another hour or so the event would have degenerated badly towards the kinds of behavior that have earned the festival its reputation. I’m not sure that I would have enjoyed seeing a sixth hour of the festival, which I’m sure would have necessitated the liberal use of sawdust and hoses.

If they’re so worried about crowd control, I think they should just go to two four hour sessions a day. I don’t even think that they’d need to change the entrance fee very much, and it would certainly be a good deal more manageable.

In summary, it seemed to me like the Toronto Festival of Beer is probably going in the right direction to shake off some of the negative reputation that it has earned over the years and some events like CASKAPALOOZA and the continued presence of the Ontario Craft Brewers are making a dent. It may never be exactly civilized, but it is a fine excuse to dress like you’re on your way to a match with Hulk Hogan.