UPDATE: Winterfest is sold out.Read the note from the Guild.
Unnecessary exclamation point? No, because Winterfest ain’t your average beer fest!
Members of the Minnesota Craft Brewer’s Guild are the “only” brewers and brew pubs present, serving you their finest wares with tasty treats and live music. Winterfest returns to fave site, Minnesota History Center, on Friday, Feb. 4, 2011 from 7pm – 10pm. Tickets are $50, go on sale Wed. Dec 1 at noon and tend to sell out pretty quickly. More information can be found here.
$50!!!!!!!!!!!! So much for craft beer being accesible to everyone.
And what price level do you feel would be more appropriate?
This event is not for “everyone.” The brewers often use this as an opportunity to showcase their most unique and special beers, some brewed exclusively for the event. Where else in MN are you going to get a keg of a 3 year old beer aged on wood? Four examples of the same IPA but with different hops? The first samples of beer from a new brewery? No where, that’s where. Plus you get a nice spread of food, live music, limited sized crowd and a chance to chat with the brewers.
Sure $50 may seem like a lot to ask at first, but when you really consider what you’re getting, it’s a steal. If you don’t like it, MN has at least 3 other annual beer fests more suited to massive crowds getting drunk.
Well put Eric. This event isn’t for everyone but it’s a very nice, more intimate event than your typical fest. It affords the attendees more time to talk to brewers and brewery employees, ask questions, and enjoy the beers without the long lines of most fests. Factor in food you don’t get at other fests and not having to wait in long lines for the bathroom and no porta-potties and it’s well worth it.
My only question is will Ticketweb be able to keep from crashing as in the last couple years with other ticket suppliers.
From the Winterfest site:
“Our ticketing partner (a partner with ticketmaster) has assured us that they are ready to handle the traffic that has crashed other servers in the past. Due to demand we cannot guarantee tickets even if you attempt to purchase right at noon, but we have done everything in our power to make it as fair as possible. If you experience any difficulty with the website going active at noon, try clearing your browser’s cache as this has been an issue for some in years past.”
Eric and Ben pretty much covered everything and sorry Matt but this is a very good deal in my opinion. I went last year for the first time and had an awesome time at this event. You get three hours or all of the craft beer you want (don’t go crazy though it can catch up to you), live music, time with the brewers/owners/employees at these breweries and some pretty decent food all for $50. If you went to a restaurant and had a good meal and four to five craft beers you would have a hard time getting out much cheaper. With approx. only 700 tickets sold it isn’t as crowded as the other beer festivals and it was money well spent for me. I only hope I can grab a ticket this year, I will see how my luck is tomorrow!
Cheers!
-Tucker
Looks like the site is locked again… Thought they had that fixed this year!
-Tucker
Site says: We’re sorry, there are no tickets currently available through TicketWeb.
If anyone ends up with an extra ticket or two I will buy it. I was going to take my brother in law for Christmas and it was sold out by 12:05. Started trying at 12:00. Have to love technology.
Thanks,
Tucker
What a joke. Ticketweb is a complete ripoff. I ordered my tickets through that lame site last year & they LOST them. Luckily I printed out my confirmation as proof of purchase, & they still had the balls to question me.
I’m completely bummed that we won’t be able to attend this year, but this is one of my LEAST favorite events. The History Center sucks for a site – the aisles are too narrow, & the stairs get downright dangerous.
Got thru and bought my ticket
Good old interwebs. I was able to get to the point of choosing tickets, adding them to my “cart”, and was told that there were no more left. Huge bummer!
I just kept refreshing and trying. Got to the point of choosing tix 3 times and it failed… 4th time was the charm. I suggest you keep trying if you want tix.
Got put in line, then kicked back to the page where it said not on sale yet. Finally got the ticket screen to open, and when I hit add to cart, it sent me to the screen saying sold out. Anyone have extras?
Ticketweb is a joke, just like brew reveiw. On at 12 and still no luck.. hello waiting room. Any one who feels like taking pity… I was going to take a terminally ill child as a “last wish.”
I started with Firefox and when I saw their “queue” screen displayed, I thought I had better open up a different browser (Chrome), in case their refreshing-implementation (ajax?) had caching issues. Sure enough, the 1st bowser seemed to refresh with the cached “tickets are not on sale” screen, while Chrome moved on to the actual ticket order form. I was able to get 2 tickets, but might have missed out if I had stuck with one browser.
Zach what would a terminally ill child do at a Beer Event? Not trying to judge but it seems like an odd request. Nikki D. I think it is actually a great location for a tasting event. It’s not too hot like the summer events or cold as the outdoor winter beer fests, it’s pretty much my favorite one. If you get drunk then yes the stairs could be a bit dangerous…
-Tucker
Already? Super lame…
http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/tix/2089378434.html
Flag the A-hole of craigslist
I hope nobody buys these tickets off of craigslist unless this person lowers them to facevalue. I would rather see the 2 tickets go unused and this person eat the cost.
…and while we’re at it, once again, as tickets become available, I’m okay with people connecting on mnbeer to sell them, however not for over face value + whatever processing fees you pay.
Sorry to hear that some of you didn’t get tickets again.
( I sent this to both of them but wanted it public as well)
Open letter to Ticketweb and MN Craft Brewer’s Guild:
I do web development professionally, and have for years. I fell victim this afternoon to Ticketweb’s “waiting room” which seems to have a serious flaw.
I followed the instructions to not reload the page, but I was curious what mechanism they were using to track my place in line. On another computer I loaded the page and watched the Headers of the request. A proper system would set a Cookie with a hash indicating that I’d been seen by their system and had a unique ticket to claim my place in line — there was none!
The waiting room basically seems like a way to weed out the suckers who follow instructions. It would refresh the page every minute and check for tickets at that point, but there was *technically* no way for it to remember my place it line. This was extremely frustrating for me, and I spent a good bit of time investigating it. I would appreciate if you can get a confirmation from Ticketweb about my findings.
I’m also convinced I was within the first second or two of clicking through the site – I was pegging the refresh button constantly until it suddenly put me in the “waiting room” where I read the instructions and patiently waited. Like a fool. Apparently those who didn’t follow instructions were rewarded.
Please, PLEASE find someone else to sell tickets through. They do this every year. This year’s “solution” was a mockery – it acted like it was holding your place but in reality it was not. I’m convinced of that from a technical standpoint coming from years of website and internet development.
If anyone has extras, I would love a couple. I did do the refresh thing and got back to the ticket screen 3 times, but it failed to add tickets to my cart every time. Bummer.
Does anyone have a 2 extra tickets? The website kicked me out:(\ thanks
If you think the guy posting on craigslist for $250 is outrageous you should see the ad for two tickets being sold for $1,000! What would people actually be willing to spend for a ticket?
Agreed Nate Solas….every year the same thing happens to me…..and on another note why can you purchase 6 at a time…this just breeds scalping like the idiot selling them for $125 on craigslist. 2 per person is all you should be able to buy, to many drunk idiots at these events anymore.
Holy shit – $1,000 for two tickets.
http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/ank/tix/2089481963.html
I cannot believe this sold out in 5 minutes. I called the phone number to make sure because I had heard about this site being faulty in the past. I am so disappointed. I wanted to get these as a gift for my husband who does home brewing. I didn’t actually think this was such a popular event. All I can say is that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth in regards to Winterfest. I also saw the Craigslist ad. People are just lame. To go through all that for an extra $150? Probably the same dufus who stood in line outside of Best Buy for 3 days to save $80 on an iPod.
Someone who is willing to drop that kind of money on tickets (like people people 100s of dollars for a bottle of Darkness) prolly use 100 dollar bills to start fires in their marble fireplaces.
I would like to purchase three (3) Winterfest tickets from any sellers. Please contact me if you’re selling. 312-986-7200 and ask for Phil G.
Sorry, forgot to leave my contact info in my above request for tickets- 612-616-9396.- Dan
There’s a new craft beer event called the St. Cloud Craft Beer Expo if you didn’t get your Winterfest tickets. Not the same event but will have more craft brands of beer than Winterfest.
I am very interested in purchasing extra tickets if anyone has some. 612-532-3001 feel free to call me anytime thanks.
A band I use to buy tickets to go see would punish scalpers by blocking them from future ticket lotteries/sales and I believe in some cases if they identified them before the tickets were sent they would cancel the order and make them available again? I wonder if the Brewer’s Guild would consider this. I think it’s a great idea… Thoughts?
I am looking for extra tickets to attend Winterfest. This would be only the 2nd time that I would have missed this event. =( Please call me at 952-484-8824 if you have extras.