Will anybody else be there? Anybody have this on their bucket list?
Wish I could. I’m thinking next year. Can’t believe tickets sold out in minutes for2014
Charlie,
I think a lot of tickets ended up being snapped up by breweries entering the event. I think the Brewers Association sells around 12,000 tickets for each of the 3 public sessions. The 700 breweries that will be pouring beer get at least 4 tickets each, and probably closer to six tickets on average. So there goes roughly 4,000 of the tickets that are available. Next, brewers and home-brewers that are members of the Brewers Association get to buy tickets. A good portion of what’s left goes to this group. Anything left (probably a couple thousand tickets) gets sold to the general public. So if you want GABF tickets, the best thing to do is join the home-brewers arm of the Brewers Association.
2013 it took them a week to sell. I was just thinking craft beer is just more popular now! But good call on joining the association
I think part of the reason for the quick sell-out this year is that there are so many new breweries in the last year that all want to participate even if they don’t bring beer to the main event. For brewers, half the reason to go to GABF is to attend all the brewer functions during the week that are outside of GABF. It ends up being a giant reunion/party for brewers, and they all (well, a lot of them) want to go.
We don’t usually attend GABF because we’ve found that the Craft Beer Conference is a better use of our education/networking dollars. Besides, if we were lucky enough to win a medal or two it would make it that much more difficult to allocate the limited amount of beer that we make.
I talked to a couple on Thursday morning aboard a Parking Spot shuttle who were on their way to GABF, they were from the OC home brewers Assoc.Looks like Beachwood cleaned up big time this year again, I’m stoked for them but I also know what that can do after seeing the insanity/demand for their product as a result from their success from last years event.
Cheers,
Bud