The new Copenhagen beer fests

This week saw the birth of two new craft beer festivals in Copenhagen:
Sour & Bitter on Thursday
Copenhagen Beer Celebration on Friday/Saturday.

A lot of hard work was put into these, and I’m sure the organizers would appreciate your feedback from a user point of view - if they are doing this again (I haven’t heard anything decisive yet)

So what was good and what was bad? Was it worth it?

So if you attended any of these please add your feedback - and please be constructive.

I think the CBC festival went well overall. I liked that there was ample seating and access to wifi.

I would propose allowing other beer bars than Mikkeller Bar to sell tokens for the CBC festival in advance. It was clear to me on Thursday that Mikkeller Bar was too small and understaffed to handle the influx of visitors wanting to buy advance tokens (or beer for that matter). If Fermentoren, Ølbaren et al were allowed to sell tokens as well it would take off some of the pressure on Mikkeller Bar and also give people an incentive to visit those other places.

Also I think the facilities to rinse your glass were subpar - in the end we solved it by buying a bottle of mineral water.

Finally, they should probably look into getting some better PA equipment as I didn’t hear a word of what was said through the bullhorn.

Very sorry I couldn’t make it this year, so I can’t really comment on the events themselves. But more co-ordination between the organisers to avoid date clashes next year would be much appreciated. It’s hard enough to do the Ølentusiaster festival justice in what is a rather compressed timescale - at least from the perspective of a Brit accustomed to major festivals having a much longer running time - without having to squeeze in another festival at the same time. I’d love to see a Copenhagen Beer Week, covering two weekends with other events in between. But then I generally go for a whole week anyway.

I was at both festivals. Sour&Bitter was awesome, unbelievable beers, reasonable prices. I didnt like that meal that much. It would be better if everyone would have gotten a dish with his meal, with this people walking around with these "snacks" it was a bit of complicated. And for the entrence of 70 Euro I exspected a bit more. But I still liked it alot there and the beers were amazing and the selection would be hard to top if the event should happen again.

CBC also was amazing, great people and great beers. The dinner there was awesome, much better than at Sour&Bitter. I was a little bit disappointed about the beer selection from some breweries, especially the Americans. If Three Floyds makes this long way here to Europe to attend a festival that wants to be the best beerfestival ever - why dont they bring there best beers with them to show what they have and can. I was hoping to see some BA Dark Lord and things like that. The beers they brought were good, but I think some of there average beers. Same for Cigar City. I was hoping for BA Hunaphus or at least the regular one. I also exspected BrewDog to bring some more specatular beers. I really liked the selection from Farmers Cabinet and their funny beernames. The brewery with the best selection definetly was Struise. And they really brought the best beers they have like Messy, Dirty Horse etc. Too bad there was no Earthnun, I was really hoping for that one.

All in all, it was a great weekend, I met a lot of great people and drank a lot of great beer. Would love to see this event happen again next year! Big thanks to all the people who made it possible that these events could happen!

Cheers!

I was at Sour & Bitter and CBC.

Sour & Bitter was fantastic beer wise, but was lacking a bit food wise. The food wasn’t bad or anything, quite the contrary, I actually found it delicious. Some courses were better than others, but generally there were great pairings and the ribs were sublime. I only had a problem with the way it was handled. Waling around with a glass, paper bag and food in your hands at the same time was a bitch. Serving sizzling hot ribs as finger food was beyond retarded. At least I wanted to have a couple more tables, so you at least could put down your stuff, and I think much would have been solved by just having some paper plates. If I’m paying 520DKK that’s the least I expect. With that said, however, the evening was amazing and well worth the money and time. But please, make it a sit down dinner of some sort next time.

CBC was great. Not as crowded as other festivals and fantastic beers. I tried maybe one beer that was less than great, but in general the standard was sky high. The rinsing was a bit troublesome, but most stands did it for you if you asked, only two stands declined doing that. The food was delicious and the beer provided was perfect with the food as well. I was extremely happy with the whole event.

All in all... I hope that these two events will come back next year.

I was at both. Sour & Bitter was nicely done apart from the slightly weird lights out food fesr - what was that all about? The PizzaPort beers were very good but the portions were quite large and I got somewhat sozzled. (Thanks to Paul & Lorna for getting me back to the hotel). So smaller servings of beer would be good.

CBC was very good - had a slightly Borefts feel which is high praise. Good selection of beers but as Kappaldav said it would have been nice to get some rarer things from the US breweries. The dining thing was frankly a pain. Before the dinners started there was plenty of seating and loads of space to move about. But once the seating area was taken over it got too crowded. The food was very good on Friday and passable on Saturday. Would prefer just to have more food available all day rather than sit down dining.

But overall they were well run enjoyable festivals and thanks to those who put the hard work in.

......and Farmers Cabinet - where did they come from? Very impressed with this brewery thai were unknown to me before CBC.

I was at both Sour & Bitter and CBC.

The fingerfood has already been commented on, but that was a great evening.

CBC was also very good, but it was disappointing that a lot of beers had already run out Friday at 9. If you only bring four beers and two of them is out it leaves a hollow feeling. Sort of like you really want people to leave so the brewers can enjoy themselves.
That is probably my only critique in a very good festival.

Regards
Defreni

Originally posted by madmitch76
I was at both. Sour & Bitter was nicely done apart from the slightly weird lights out food fesr - what was that all about? The PizzaPort beers were very good but the portions were quite large and I got somewhat sozzled.

I was at the Friday CBC event and had a blast. I got there before opening with a crew from Gothenborg and got in fast. Limiting tickets is awesome if you are able to get one :). The beers were fantastic for the most part....hell...I could have spent the entire event in front of the Struise wagon and been happy.

Potable water dispensers would have been much better than the mini water bottles for sale. If I would have known what the water situation was I would have just brought my own. I saw people trying to rinse glasses out of a giant ICB out by the track many times and that didn’t go well. :)

I be back next year.

I wasn’t at CBC unfortunately, but made it to sour and bitter. Very good event in terms of size, manageable crowd in general. The food point was a good one, even if everything was very tasty, a buffet and paper plate idea might work slightly better. Wifi was there but unaccessible for the evening, which was unfortunate. Everything else was super smooth. Thank you!

I think this thread is a very good idea, so here are my two cents:

I attended Copenhagen Beer Celebration both days. The selection of beer was great and unlike Defreni I didn’t notice a whole lot of beers that weren’t accessible. In fact I don’t think I missed a single beer, that I wanted to try.

Ken described the seating situation very well. I have no idea why we had to leave our tables more than an hour before the first dinner was served, or why we were asked to leave the tables again when finished, since we were dining as the last persons. Then the tables were vacant for half an hour before somebody cleaned them and we were let back in, which really didn’t seem necessary.

Water dispensers would have been nice as well, but the lack of seating for some five hours was easily my main problem with CBC.

All the great beer more than made up for that, so it was still a great event for me and I had two fun days. Thanks for making this happen.