Michigan Beer Film Showing in Farmington, MI

I’ve had ideas of what would make a cool beer event for years.  I’d always think to myself, “It would be really cool if they did this.”  I would briefly get excited about organizing such an event myself, but would quickly lose my motivation as I started to think about all the tasks that would have to be done, and just getting started.  This time was different.

After seeing The Michigan Beer Film downtown Detroit at the Fillmore in November, I came back thinking I could bring that to downtown Farmington and rent out the Farmington Civic Theater.  I started thinking about how to incorporate beer.  I talked to my wife about it, and Lora was supportive.  Instead of extinguishing my early enthusiasm, she started talking about logistics of the event.  We quickly started to pull together something that had some structure and seemed like it might work.  The key was figuring out the money side of it.

Lora called the Civic Theater and got their prices for theater rental.  I started a spreadsheet with various costs.  The next key was figuring out how many people we expected to come so we could figure out expected revenue to offset the costs we had come up with.  To get these estimates, I took the Detroit Fillmore showing of MI Beer Film attendance, as well as attendance numbers at the Craft Beer tasting night of the Farmington Harvest Moon festival, and then walked in & out various factors that would make our event turn-out either higher or lower.  Armed with predicted attendance numbers and costs, it showed on paper we could make it work.  Then we had to go convince others.

I started out talking with the pub, Cowley’s where we planned to hold the beer end of things to convince them it was a good thing.  In the process, I also talked to Rex Halfpenny who has a monthly craft beer tasting at Cowley’s.  Together, we fleshed out more details of how the event would work and brought some more legitimacy to the effort.  Rex suggested bringing in Paw Paw Brewing and said he’d called the brewer out there to see if he could get them on board.  Lora & I talked to Rhino Media and told them about the plan, who was involved, and got them involved.  Tim Cowley then got on board as well, and we had an official event.

After agreeing on pricing and how we’d handle the money from ticket sales amongst all parties, I set up the event on EventBrite to officially start selling tickets, created a web page as a branch off of BeerSnobby.com and got into promotion gear.  I posted to every craft beer website that seemed reasonably well-put-together and had a calendar of events.  I sent messages to people that Tweeted about craft beer in Michigan and had a decent number of followers.  We wrote press releases and worked with local media to get our story told in online or printed form of various newspapers.  We went to a number of good liquor stores around the area and asked to put up posters and/or leave a stack of postcards with event info on them for people to see when they paid at the counter.

I also got 2 good beer stores in the Farmington area (Meadows Fine Wine on Farmington Rd, and Royal Liquor on 8 Mile Rd) sign on to be event supporters and get their name added to the posters/postcards in exchange for financial support.  I also arranged with the Paw Paw distributor to make arrangements with these 2 stores to get some Paw Paw beer in bottles delivered to them since Paw Paw didn’t have existing bottle distribution contract set up with anyone in Oakland County yet.  And lastly, at Rex’s January tasting at Cowley’s, he & I both said a few words about the event, passed out post cards to everyone there, and sold a few tickets that night.

After that, it was a lot of waiting for ticket sales to get going.  I didn’t have the ability to track how many people visited my web page with the description of the event, but I could see how many people went to the EventBrite site.  Slowly sales started to trickle in, and in the last 2 weeks leading up to the event, we sold 50% of the tickets.  It was great seeing it go so well, and actually get attendance up to 178, which aligned right with where we expected it to be based on the early on projections I had done.

The night of the event, Lora & I sat at a table by the door and checked people off a list that had bought their tickets in advance.  We gave them wristbands so they could get into the theater when we walked over there, tickets for their 3 beers (full 16 oz. pints), a beer menu of the 4 Paw Paw beers we had on tap, and coupons the 2 supporting liquor stores had made up for $$ off craft beer purchases at their stores.  On the back of the menu, I had maps to both locations and made mention that these 2 stores had special arrangements to carry a limited amount of bottled Paw Paw.  Talking with these locations afterwards, they’ve had a small amount of people cash in on the coupons (surprisingly), and the beer has been selling, but it hasn’t flown off the shelves or anything.  Both stores were pleased with the advertising they got out of it and the additional traffic they got, so that’s good.

While we were checking people in, up on stage Rex Halfpenny, Kevin Romeo (Director of MI Beer Film), and Trevor Klimek (brewer at Paw Paw Brewing) were talking about beer and the movie to the massive crowd.  Later, some people mentioned that in the back they had a hard time hearing them because of all the noise and just the speaker up front by the stage.  But that was just one or two people.

Lora went ahead of me to the theater to help manage ticket collection and getting people in for the show.  We comfortably filled the 275-seat theater.  Obviously we weren’t at 100% theater capacity, but every row had people, and people sat in their groups they came with, not having to be elbow-to-elbow.  I’d seen the movie twice before that, but it was still enjoyable.  Everyone pretty much hung on to the end of the full 2 hours (although several people later shared the thought that it could have been shorter and accomplished the same thing), and then maybe about half of the group went back to Cowley’s to cash in any remaining beer sample tickets or to buy additional rounds.

At the after-event at Cowley’s the same 3 speakers were up there, and people asked assorted random questions about the film or about the MI beer industry.  I had held back on my personal sampling of the beer until the after-event, other than one very delicious KUA (Kalamazoo Urban Assault) Pale Ale that I enjoyed while checking people in at the start.  Unfortunately, it was gone by the time the after-event came around.  I tried the Vanilla Bean Porter, but wasn’t a big fan of that one.  I did have a St. James English Mild, which I had tried before, and knew that one was good.  Satisfied, I walked home, pleased with the success of the event.

 Michigan Brewers Guild Winter Beer Festival

February 22nd, 2014, Grand Rapids, MI

Ticket sales for the 2014 festival were crazy.  We knew the trend from previous years with it selling out in record time, more quickly each year.  2013 Sold out in 13 hours.  So Kevin & I were prepared.  There were 4 of us going, and they were limiting sales to 2 tickets per person.  Sales went live on the web at 11:00 am on a Sunday.  We immediately tried buying tickets and ran into massive delays and purchase pages timing out before we could complete sales transactions.  Eventually we got through and were some of the lucky ones in the 3 hour frenzy.

We followed the pattern we’ve worked out for the Winter Festival of driving out Saturday morning to Grand Rapids, attempting to check in to the hotel, then getting layered up in our outdoor cold gear and grabbing a quick bite to eat in town.  The city was offering bus transportation to & from the festival this year, so we bought tickets for that rather than going the taxi route.  Standing in the massive long line waiting to get in, I took a mental note that next year, rather than being the guy standing there jealously watching someone drink a beer, I’d be that guy drinking a beer.  I still find the pretzel necklace thing too trendy for my liking.  I tried going the route of a bag of beef jerky and granola bars.  But that was just a pain in the backside having one more thing to lug around.

As we got in through the gates, the sun was shining and a lot of the massive amount of snow that mother nature had dumped on us in Michigan this year was melting and running away.  So the parking lot was a mix of giant ice chunks, hard-packed snow, and slush.  The wind was whipping so although the sun looked nice, it was a pretty chilly year.  We had the usual fun randomly going from tent to tent and finding a brewery that looked interesting but didn’t have too long of a line.  Everything we had was generally pretty good (ratings below).  We had planned that we would take one of the earlier buses back into town to avoid being over-alcohol’d and thus waste the Grand Rapids downtown nightlife.  So we took the bus back and got into our room and changed to slightly less wintery garb- but still warm enough for our walking tour.

5 Stars

• Original Gravity, Southpaw IPA
• Cellar Brewing, Monkey Wrench Imperial IPA
• Hopcat, Son of Hoppo American IPA
• Grand Rapids Brewing, Silver Foam

4.5 Stars

• Dark Horse, Double Crooked Tree
• Jamesport, Altbier
• 51 North, Dogway IPA
• Wolverine State, Gulo Gulo IPL

4 Stars

• Paw Paw, Black Talon
• Motor City, Winter Ale Barleywine
• Griffin Claw, Norm’s Raggedy Ass IPA
• Witch’s Hat, Big Doedish

3.5 Stars

• North Peak, Wanderer
• White Flame, Double Tap

3 Stars

• Arcadia, Thunder Trail ESB

We had hoped that getting back early we’d be able to make it in to HopCat and get some of that delicious Mac n’ Cheese with chorizo and jalapenos.  As it turned out, we could get in, but not a table or chair to be found anywhere (or at least empty).  We walked around in the area a bit, confronted my multiple places overflowing with people until we came to The Back Forty Saloon.  It looked decent enough inside, but in contrast to everywhere else, was pretty much empty.  The menu looked decent enough, and although the tap selection was far from inspiring, it of course had Founders on tap so we stayed.  The
burgers were really good, and the Founders of course delicious.  It started to fill up slowly by the time we were heading out.  Apparently it typically got busy later on as it had live bands playing country music on the weekends.

Next stop was what is always a mandatory stop, Founder’s.  It of  course was crowded, as it was also on other people’s list.  Luckily, we were dressed for walking around outside in the winter, and the recently added massive outdoor beer garden/deck had the propane heaters fired up and blazing.  So we enjoyed some outdoor fire/heat while sipping on our fresh Founders outside.  It worked out quite nice.

From there, we headed back across the giant parking lot and down the alley to Stella’s Lounge.  This place had a really feel to it, with a giant long bar running the length of the place, and a number of tables paralleling it with places to order food.  It had a kind of 50’s rock & roll bar feel to it with its colors of black, white, and red, and an interesting collection of 80’s era video game machines.  It was packed and there were people standing, apparently waiting for tables.  We saw a table at the end with no one sitting at it, but a giant stack of menus piled on the table.  We looked around, and there was no seating hostess, and it seemed to be first-come, first-served.  So we decided a giant stack of menus wouldn’t keep us from drinking so we sat down at the table.  A waitress quickly came along and cleared the menus and got us a round of drinks.
Shortly after we started to notice the dirty looks from those waiting.
One girl passed by our table on the way to the bathroom and called us table thieves or something and kept on going.  Later we talked to one of the angry mob to find out if they had a waiting list or a hostess or anything and they said no.  Basically everyone thought the end table was off limits because of the pile of menus so they had not sat down.  We were the target of their frustrated waiting when we took it upon ourselves to not be intimidated by a pile of menus.  After a couple of rounds, we moved on.

Next stop was Grand Rapids Brewing Company.  A new addition to Grand Rapids, they had set up shop on the same block on Ionia street as the infamous Hopcat.  They had re-done the interior of the bar to look like an 1800’s general merchandise store with lots of warm-colored wood and a beautiful bar.  OK, I suppose an old hardware store probably didn’t have a giant bar, but it seemed to go with the rest of it, that I just embraced it.  By this time, the multiple rounds were starting to weigh on me, so I opted for a lighter beer.  I found Sliver Foam, a 4.5% light lager.  It was amazingly delicious.  Tasty malt flavor, but very clean finishing, it went down so easily.  It was just what I needed at that point.  It was so good, it made me want to explore other beers on their menu, but I couldn’t bring myself to divert from something that was already proven to be a home run, and that was this light at this point of the night.

We also had a strange “table jumping” encounter at GR Brewing.  This place was also quite packed.  We found a rather large long table that could maybe seat about 10 people, but only had 7 people sitting at it.  We asked if they were using the other 3 chairs and they said no, so we sat down at the end.  We noticed some more dirty looks from people standing nearby.  A little bit later a waiter came over and said that there was a large group waiting for the table to free up and that we should leave.  Convincing him of the stupidity of leaving 3 empty seats in a place as crowded as this, we said that when the rest of the table left, we’d get up, too.  In the end, the waiting group had like 8 people.  So when the 7 left, we found another chair for them and they all had a seat.  They still grumbled and glared, which made no sense.  After being called unscrupulous by the waiter for failing to leave when the rest of the group did, we just got frustrated with it and left.

After a short stop back at The Back Forty Saloon, confirming they indeed did get busy and they also had a live band, we decided to call it a night.  One of my biggest disappointments was that the Taco Time across the street from Amway Grand Plaza Hotel was gone, and so was my late-night burrito fix after a full day of Grand Rapids Winter Beer Festival merriment.  We decided the best course of action was to replace the empty late-night burrito calories with more late-night empty beer calories so we stopped in at Flanagan’s Irish Pub that was nearby.  Nothing too exciting going on, other than listen to the bartender cut off the very drunk guy sitting at the bar next to us.  We know he must have been in bad shape for them to cut him off, yet still serve us.  Deciding we should bow out before receiving the same treatment, went back to the hotel and crashed.  At 12:00, it was probably one of the latest nights post-Winter Beer Festival, and it seemed to be a good balance of festival sampling and touring of the excellent Grand Rapids downtown nightlife.