Here’s a nice response from the Minnesota Craft Brewer’s Guild regarding Winterfest. They’re a stand-up, non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Minnesota’s great local beer. I sincerely hope that your experience at the event won’t turn you off of their other great events.

Dear Winterfest 2008 Patrons,

We wanted to send our apologies to those of you that were in the line outside of Landmark Center in the cold on Friday night waiting to get entrance into Winterfest. We increased the amount of attendees this year and our old ticketing method along with adding identifying wrist bands did not work for the new sized crowd. As soon as the event planners were informed of the slow-moving line we quickly added 5 additional staff members to help the group move along more quickly. We then announced and added an extra half hour onto the tail end of the festival (ending at 10:30 p.m.) to make up for the time at the front where you were not enjoying the delicious Minnesota craft beer! Please accept our sincerest apologies and we will be working out a much better system for our future brewing events.

We hope you enjoyed the festival despite the line-up snag. All sixteen MN Craft Brewer’s Guild brewery members were present and enjoyed sharing their Winter brews with each of you – many of which were only available to this festival! Congratulations to the Minneapolis Town Hall Brewery and brewer’s Mike Hoops, Josh Bischoff, and Adam Theis for winning the great Snowshoe award for their delicious Chocolate Raspberry Bourbon Stout! Winterfest along with Autumn Brew Review are fundraisers for the MN Craft Brewer’s Guild whose non-profit work promotes local, craft brewing in the state. We thank you for your patronage and understanding and hope to see you at our next event!

Save The Dates:

Autumn Brew Review 2008– September 27

Winterfest 2009 – January 23

Our apologies again, please forward this on to your friends and family that attended with you and thank you for your continued support!

Laura with the Minnesota Craft Brewer’s Guild

Another Winterfest has come and gone and another 400+ Minnesotans left Landmark center with a cool buzz (or perhaps happily drunk?) after being exposed to some of Minnesota’s best beers. Needless to say, I tried a lot of beers, spoke to a lot of people and came to the realization that I should read the camera’s instruction manual before shooting a bunch of throw-away shots. Regardless, there are photos for your enjoyment over at Flickr.

Town Hall’s Chocolate Raspberry Bourbon Stout took the Great Snowshoe award, though there were many, many standout beers. I have a few more ideas for homebrew projects thanks to a number of breweries.

Kudos to everyone who once again worked so hard to put on such a solid event. These events aren’t easy to put on and the Minnesota Craft Brewer’s Guild and Flings Event Design do a great job.

Warning… spoiler ahead… if you don’t want to know what everyone is bringing to this year’s Winterfest, whatever you do, don’t download this pdf! Otherwise… go wild.

You can thank Colin for posting this early. Enjoy!