South End Hops Festival

This was a nice event. I think I expected a bit more (like the festivals in South Park), but all in all it was fun. Way too hot for anyone there. The ppl working the tents were even burning up. Played some games, tried some beers the end

Had awesome time. Lots of beers and cheers. Very sunny. Dog friendly. Had two different bands and food trucks. Some games. Nice to support the local area breweries.

Dog friendly with live music and a couple of raffles/​games. Parking was tricky with the only lot being a pay one and side street parking was an adventure. The space was decent, but the lack of shade and the buildings nearby made you feel like you were in an oven. Also, the commemorative beer glass was plastic which was a let down.
If you like hoppy beers then this was the festival for you. If you’re just a general beer fan then it didn’t really match up to the other festivals going on in Charlotte.

So, the logo for the Hops Fest was a very, very big water tower beer mug.
There I was like a tourist in the Land of Oz — looking around. «Has anyone seen the tower? I want to drink from the big glass tower…» When *Poof* CM Nikki appeared in her red gown and waved her wand (lots of Unilocal glitter everywhere!).
«Michael, first of all watch where you’re stepping, there’s lots of dogs around, and second follow the yellow beer road.»
With glass in hand, pep in my step and a new found purpose, I did just that. Tent after tent — D9, Sugar Creek, and Natty Greene, oh my! Lone Rider, Bayne and Triple C, oh my! Heist, Lenny Boy and OMB, oh my!
Then, finally, there it was gleaming in the sunlight! I looked down and saw I was wearing ruby red beer mug slippers! Toto (aka Marley) growled and said, «Dude? Why are you wearing your bedroom slippers and staring at that flashlight?» The End?
On the real: I discovered some new favorites here: the Thirsty Nomad and Gibb’s 100 = everything they had was excellent! The festival is still small but gets better each year. There were a couple of no shows but still plenty to sample. Maybe a fairer ticket cost at this point would be $ 25 (but I got mine for free — Yay! And Thanks!). Great way to hang in Charlotte on a sunny day!!!

I was out of town last year for the inaugural event, so this was my first year for South Ends Hops Festival. It’s a smaller scale neighborhood type beer event. If you go in expecting Oktoberfest, you will be disappointed.
A lot of local players on hand this year. Sugar Creek had one of my favorite beers– their Frambroise. It’s a seasonal raspberry. I also really liked Lenny Boy’s Citrus-​ting kombucha.
There were only two food trucks (Libretto’s and Maki Taco) and Newk’s on site for food options. That’s fine with me. I’m a firm believer that you should eat before you go to a beer festival. Hello, you need a strong base to start the day! However, the lines were pretty long.
This is a dog friendly event. However, it was 90 degrees outside and every four legged critter looked absolutely miserable. Guys, man’s bet friend doesn’t want to walk around for five hours while you get craft beer wasted. I recommend leaving them at home.
There’s not a lot of parking in this area, but unless you have a DD you shouldn’t be driving to and from a beer festival. Über it. Or make you buddy’s pregnant wife drop you off like it’s homeroom. I met a guy who said that’s what he did. Tremendous.

This is a smaller festival in its first year. In full disclosure we won tickets through Unilocal so I honestly can’t complain too much because it’s a free beer festival and truly what could be better?! I did however, want to write an honest review because there are definitely a few things they could improve upon and since I love beer festivals I’d like this one to continue :)
Beer: I actually enjoyed a lot of the beers available though I won’t say there was a huge selection. D9 had a sour my husband raved about, and I second Jeff on Southern Pines. I will agree not a ton of craft options, but I was a pretty happy camper regardless. I was excited to see a cider booth but they didn’t have a liquor license yet and were just out promoting which was a bummer…
Crowds: Or lack thereof. A big PLUS for me was not having to wait in any lines. There were definitely people, just not so many that you couldn’t get a beer in a reasonable amount of time. This also made for clean facilities which was appreciated.
VIP: I’ll be honest I would have been really angry if I had paid extra for VIP seating.. We had planned on taking advantage of the «catered-​food» for our lunch but it ran out fast. They originally had available some cut up chicken fingers, wings, fries and chips. They said they were going to order more but never did (we kept checking back and were pretty disappointed). There was almost no seating and even less in shaded areas… a big fail considering it was nearly 90 degrees that day.
Entertainment: We really liked the music, Hero’s at Last and Of Good Nature both played great songs and were fun to listen to/​watch!
All in all we had a really lovely day, but I am not sure that I would shell out my own cash to attend unless some changes were made…

There were some ominous clouds overhead for much of the day — guess they didn’t realize that we were VIPs or something. Luckily they seemed to stay away, at least as long as we were there. Unfortunately, we weren’t there long. As Jeff says, you can only go around in a circle so many times (and more importantly, it was a pretty small circle).
Another good point he made is that though there were plenty of folks hanging tough in the face of that nasty-​looking cloud, easily the best vendor was the trailer from Southern Pines. The rest of the folks just seemed to phone it in. In fact, many didn’t even do that — a decent number of the booths were staffed with volunteers of the charity (and there isn’t anything wrong with that), but the volunteers didn’t know anything about what they were serving.
Hey, if you’re going to go through the trouble of coming out for a cause, at least go through the trouble of learning about what you’re doing. It takes two minutes, and makes the experience so much better. Instead, they were just pouring (and it’s good they got that down) and barely handling that — at least one person was manning two of the tables.
As to the event itself: Meh. The catered food in the VIP was pretty cheesy. There was a quesadilla at first, but I think it was literally a quesadilla. After the first one was gone, I don’t think they ever brought out another. The trailer with the couch was kinda cool, but there were about five chairs, and they said they had a hundred VIP tickets? No way that would have worked if everyone showed up back there. Plus, even the craft-​but-​not-​craft beer in the VIP section wasn’t working for the first little bit. That’s just a little odd.

It’s beginning to seem like there is a beer festival every weekend in this town and I think it’s starting to become overwhelming not just for the people like me who attend many of them but it has to be hard on the breweries as well which is probably why we only saw a few of the locals represented here.
The event seemed to be focused towards more to the beers of Adams Distributing and the «craft» beers owned by Anheuser Busch. The highlight of this festival was the appearance by Southern Pines brewery which is just opening later this month in you guessed it, Southern Pines.
Entertainment was good. There were 3 food trucks representedl. The VIP area was cool with catered food, free water and sodas, a viewing area right next to the stage and the Panthers Prowler which is a air-​conditioned trailer with a sofa and TV.
Unfortunately, the band wasn’t enough to keep me here. We were in and out within 2 hours. There’s only so many times you can walk around in a circle. I hope it got busier after we left because the food trucks looked a bit upset with the lack of business.
Hopefully there are lessons learned for next year’s events but judging by this year’s experience, I doubt I’ll be back next year.