Top 5 Things I’ve Learned Volunteering at Beer Festivals
There are many great reasons to volunteer your time. Giving back to the community, networking in a field of interest, changing someone’s life, or gain a new perspective. Sometimes people do it to learn with a hands on experience that you don’t have to pay for. That being said, here are some things I’ve learned while volunteering at beer festivals, in no particular order.
Organization is Key
Adams Avenue Street Fair was the first beer festival that I have volunteered at and I sure learned a lot about the industry. I volunteered at a evening shift but had to come in early for the ABC training. Normally, this wouldn’t have been a big issue for me as I understand you need to do this to be legal. However, this was the most unorganized training I have ever been to and it seemed like a giant waste of my time. I arrived a couple of minutes early and stood around waiting in a big group of people. We waited for about 15 minutes before we were finally addressed.
A quick check in, which my name wasn’t even on, and then the training began. A flustered guy came up and couldn’t remember half of what he needed to tell us. They passed around an information sheet with all the needed information and we went on our way. Unless this isn’t allowed by the ABC, an email would have been much better.
Take Care of Your Beer
At the garden I volunteered in we were pouring two beers from Stone Brewing and two beers from Maui Brewing. The kegs of beer were stored in a refrigerated truck to ensure proper temperature range and freshness. That was about the extent of them taking care of the beer. Only one of the four kegs was in an ice bath. The CO2 level on the regulator was way too high. Finally, the jockey boxes didn’t have much ice inside.
All of these lead to an extremely over foamy beer. While, I’ll take an over carbonated beer over a flat beer any day of the week, these were over kill. I’m talking half the cup was foam. It was so bad that when pouring the beer we poured the cup and then let it sit on top of the jockey box until it settled down. Be sure to take care of your beer.
Bring Proper Signage
So far I’ve volunteered at two different beer festivals. So far there’s been two times when I wish we had more signs around. At the Adams Avenue festival there were two lines, paying in cash and prepaid VIP cards. With zero signs posted as to which line was which, the volunteers were left yelling out instructions to the people patiently waiting in “lines”.
While not nearly as drastic as Adams Avenue, the Rock Star Festival could have done with some signs as well. Two volunteers posted at each jockey box with no signs. Each time a new person came up, you had to tell them which brewery you were pouring and what beer. Some of the volunteers had been there before and brought their own cardboard and markers to make signs. Proper signage at either event would have made things run a lot smoother.
Bring Plenty of Change
This is something that I’ve learned volunteering and at the coffee shop I started in college. So far I’ve only volunteered at one event where you had to pay cash at the festival. The cash line was extremely long and everyone had 20 dollar bills from ATM machines around the festival. That and the price points of $4 and $6 led to a lot of singles being given out. We ran out of change so many times during the night that we tried many different tactics to combat it. We swapped out $20 for 20 singles from the tip jar and we took orders from people with exact change first. Either way, this was a nuisance and definitely something to be avoided if at all possible.
Bring all Needed Equipment (and some extras)
At one point during my volunteer shift at Adams Avenue one of the jockey box wasn’t working correctly. Not a huge problem, or unexpected one, and they had an extra one to swap it out with. We emptied the kegs on the other jockey box at the same time we were switching and ran into an issue of not having any beer pouring at one point. The main thing I learned during this experience is that things go wrong at events and festivals. With things going wrong, it’s always a good idea to have some extra equipment laying around to help fix the issue.
At the Rock Star Beer event I volunteered at they didn’t have any tap handles on any of the taps. Since we were only volunteering for 4 hours, it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience. If you’ve never seen a tap without a tap handle, its a very small place to grip with exposed threading. The threading can start to wear down on your hands after opening and closing the tap all night.
Have you learned anything from volunteering at beer festivals? Let me know in the comments below! Be sure to follow my social media and subscribe for my newsletter to stay up to date on my adventures!
0 Comments