Beer foamy

Went last night with Margie on … a date! Yes, we went off to the Denver Zoo “Brew at the Zoo” soiree, something we’ve not done before, but which we’ll be doing again.

Jackie baby-sat Katherine (for more, see next post), and we headed down there, arriving a bit before 7.

So, basic setup — for a chunk o’ change, you get admission to the zoo (well, as far as the giraffes on one side, the bears on the other, and pachyderm house in the middle). In the big party pavillion and nearby space, they have many booths and table set up. Most of the significant microbreweries in town come and give free beer of various types, as does a meadery and a couple of wineries. Several restaurants also have booths, giving away food to much on.

The Good

1. Beer good. No, really, lots of good beer. And most places would pour you either a taste or a full stein.
2. You get a free commerative half-pint stein.
3. Some good food, too. Paramount Cafe had some excellent chili, and Qdoba as doing some good rice bowls.
4. When we first arrived, it was still twilighty, and they were doing some fun educational things — showing off some up-close animals (a little hedgehog, a kookabura, a possum, a hawk), and having feeding time for the lions and wild dogs. Also some ed bits with the elephants.
5. Did I mention the lots of good beer? There was a yummy pomegranite wheat from a Ft Collins brewery that was very tasty.
6. Nice just spending time with Margie.
7. A tasty dessert booth, centrally located. Mostly brownies and yummy lemon bars of various sorts. A nice break.
8. There was a convenient taxi stand set up at the entrance, for those who over-imbibed. I don’t know if it was that we spread out the drinking or ate plenty of food or not, but I didn’t feel particularly tipsy leaving, and no hang-over this morning, which was also nice.
9. The weather was rainy earlier in the afternoon, but it was cool and nice for the evening.

The Bad

1. Some bad beer, too — stuff that was way too hoppy stands out, but a few other examples. Makes sense — given the wide array of beers, some places are going to try and stand out by going to extremes. That’s risky (and there’s no accounting for my taste, so there, too).
2. That said, it was also a bit repetitious — everyone had a wheat, a lager or ale, a stout or porter. A few places had other stuff. But there was the conflict between “Do I want to bounce back and forth between different flavors” or “Do I want to get sick of just one flavor?”
3. Colorado wineries — at least those here — just aren’t very good. C-class. Not bad, but, really, they didn’t belong here.

The Ugly

1. The crowds were significant when we arrived and nearly too much when we left. This had a lot of ramifications:
   • Because the booths/tables were pretty compacted, it became very tight maneuvering inside the pavillion to get to a table (sort of like a bad big party), and difficult to maneuver past the lines outside>
   • The lines outside, for food, were way too long. We managed to game it a bit by having one of us stand in line while another of us got refills. Still, annoying. The crowds were bad at 7:30, worse at 8:30, and finally were winding down at 9:30, around when we were leaving (just ahead of the 10 p.m. rush).
   • There were more people than expected. I know that because we talked with various food vendors, who had brought stuff for around 500-600, and often ran out. Qdoba had to run out to one of their stores to get more. CB & Potts went dark about 8:30. The cheese sandwhich place was out of food by 9:30, and they had brought makings for 1700 sandwiches.

2. They ran out of commemorative shirts in larger sizes. Their (literal) loss.

My unsolicited advice: They either need to cap the attendance (at about half of what was there), or spread out the food and drink areas a bit. Even though about 3/4 of the zoo was fenced off, they still had far more room to spread out vending areas, and it would have allowed for a less crowded, more pleasant experience all around.

That all said? We still had a lot of fun — tasty beer and good company — and will plan on going back again in the future.