Kmflett's Blog

I was at Beavertown’s 4th birthday event at Tottenham Hale on Saturday (14^th February 2016)

It has attracted some comment on social media and muttering elsewhere.

In my view the idea of holding a festival of some of the most interesting ‘craft’ beers in the UK was a good one and the principle of making it a free and un-ticketed event was also right on this occasion.

But as any CAMRA remember will remind you (I joined in 1975) organising beer festivals is much harder than might be thought.

I’ve since ‘ascended’ to higher things but I was once a trade union organiser and I know very well that when you organise things, if something goes wrong you get the blame. If it goes OK, it’s taken for granted (see CAMRA fests). That’s fine by me since I’m invariably organising something for a purpose.

Anyway I did get in on Saturday and yes I do live very nearby in the proletarian utopia of Tottenham Hale. However I queued with the rest from just after 1pm (having come from doing some union organising work with the local MP David Lammy).

It was at least not raining and the free can of Gamma Ray while we waited was a nice gesture. That said I am no fan of queues and I am rarely to be found joining one.

Inside it was indeed very busy, sometimes too busy. That said there were lots of interesting beers and provided you picked your bar there was no wait.

The pricing at £2 a third, irrespective of style and strength, was also an important feature. It encouraged an equality of sampling of new beers, not always seen in similar events run on strict commercial lines.

And the weather wasn’t as bad as it often is in the middle of the Six Nations rugby series.

Criticisms I have a few. More toilets are needed. Drinking beer particularly when it’s cold tends to provoke the need to urinate.

I also had a good deal of sympathy for those who travelled from outside London and found the wait to get in just too long. Just last week I was the Celt Firefest in Caerphilly having booked a nearby hotel with my partner Megan for an overnight stay. The event was ticketed but if it hadn’t been and we hadn’t been able to get in I would have felt seriously grumpy. This needs to be looked at (entrance arrangements not how grumpy I am)

Finally I note on social media suggestions that since the event had 4,000 likes on Facebook, the organisers should have known it would be very busy and ramped things up accordingly.

Hmm. Anyone who organises anything that is un-ticketed knows that attendance is quite unpredictable and FB is no guide. Clicking like on FB does not translate into feet on the ground in Tottenham Hale (if only).

So perhaps at least some ticketing is going to be needed for future Beaver events on such a scale to manage numbers and expectations about getting in or not.

That aside it was a great day. It showed an admirable ambition and deserves a ‘well done’