Blues, Brews and BBQ… Great time, despite the limited beer selection.
I am sure most who attended Blues, Brews and BBQ during Festivall Charleston had a great time as I did. Good weather, great music and spending time with friends on the beautiful University of Charleston lawn — what more could you ask for?
How about a wider selection of good beer!
The event had almost everything going for it. It almost came close to living up to its name. There was definitely swill-a-plenty and if you searched, you could have found a few draft beers from Rogue, such as Juniper Ale and Shakespeare stout (not exactly a “summer” beer, but hey, I’m a beer geek year round). The events organizers, I am sure, made a valiant effort to include such beers. It would have been so easy for them to have just sold their souls to Dickie Barber, and just offered an all “Budweiser” line-up of beer, but they didn’t. Cheers to them…
Such events are a great way to not only raise funds for non-profits, but to also promote locally-made products such as our five West Virginia breweries. Our Mountain State brewing brethren are brewing good beer, and an effort should be made to help these WV businesses succeed. This formula always proves successful at the Wine and Jazz festival which is held the very next evening at the same venue. In fact, only West Virginia winemakers are invited. The laws that allow liberal sale, distribution and even sampling of wine, do not exist for beer, so the “Wine and Jazz” formula legally cannot work for beer in this State. (By the way, the wine laws were under attack at this year’s legislative session. Wine wholesalers wanted to force small wineries to work through them… Luckily for WV wineries, the attempt failed)
I thought the Blues, Brews & BBQ event pricing was a bit out of line when compared to the Wine and Jazz festival, which I also attended. The ticket price at Wine and Jazz included an unlimited number of wine samples (1 oz) and an appropriate wine glass, along with Eric Marienthal as a headline act. Attendees could sample wines until they found one that they liked; then they were allowed to purchase a bottle or glass directly from the winemaker, with 100% of the profit going directly to the winemaker, thus keeping them in business.
The beer fest ticket was a few bucks cheaper, but all it got you basically was the music. The beer was served in plastic cups, and samples are verboten by WV law. Are you going to hand over $4 for a plastic cup full of an interesting sounding beer that you were unable to sample and may not even like? The wine enthusiast can venture out to taste new wines risk free…
I saw many happy faces that evening, most drinking cold macro lager, and a few of us drinking the flavorful stuff. Yet we were all having a great time. The music was excellent. Robert Cray sounded especially good and the Jimi Vincent band was no slouch either. I just hope next year we can chase away the “Mo Betta Beer” blues…
July 11th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
You said it!!! I would have bailed if it wasn’t for Robert Cray!! He was great, as expected!! BBB Sucked[except for the music]!! Wine & Jazz went off smooth as usual! As a beer geek, I hated to say that, but I have to give credit where credit is due.