HOToberFest Cancelled

HOToberFest cancelledHOToberFest is no more.  Alan Raines, the organizer of the popular HOToberFest event, says the changing climate of craft beer and increasingly strict regulations have forced him to cancel any future plans for the festival.

HOToberFest started in 2008 when there were very few beer festivals like it in Atlanta.  Raines says the goal was to help promote the culture of craft beer in Georgia as well as raising funds for Trees Atlanta and Legacy World Missions.  As beer festivals became more commonplace (there are now festivals nearly every weekend in Georgia), the event took a year off in 2014 to restructure, returning in 2015 as the HOToberfest Barrel Aged Ball.  The new HOToberFest invited Georgia brewers to create a unique beer and age it in a wood barrel, and then serve it directly from the barrel at the event.  This format cut attendance from over 3,000 to just 350 all-VIP tickets and included rare bottled beers as well as food samples from local chefs.  With so many “everyman” beer festivals in Atlanta today the goal was to be something special for the hardcore craft beer fans.

“The Georgia environment for producing beer-centric
events [is] getting worse and basically quite hostile.”

While it was a huge success and attendees sampled some beers that they’ll likely never see again, Raines says making the event happen was a major challenge.  He tells us he finds, “…the Georgia environment for producing beer-centric events to be getting worse and basically quite hostile, unlike that of neighboring states, and almost every other state for that matter.”  The process just to get the beer to a festival is a tricky one.  For example, with HOToberFest Barrel Aged Ball, the brewers had to register each barrel as a new beer and wait on approval of the “new” beer before they could send it to the festival, if you saw some breweries listed as participating but then being absent, this is the likely cause.  With the 3-tier system breweries in Georgia must go through their distributor to donate beer to a non-profit festival.  While some distributors are very good about working this out, others aren’t.  At least one distributor requires festival organizers to purchase the beer from them then work with each brewery to recoup the costs for their donation.  As a side note, donating beer to charity events was recently passed in Alabama, where brewers there can now donate up to two kegs without the need to go through their distributor.  You can imagine the time, money, and logistics this saves for both participating breweries and the festival organizers.

HOToberFest
Ale Sharpton and Alan Raines enjoying HOToberFest in 2013, before the man forced Raines to cancel plans for future events. (Photo: courtesy Ale Sharpton)

In addition to the hurdles in just getting beer to the events many municipalities have tightened regulations on hosting beer events.  Outside of the expected alcohol permits some areas require all volunteers to be certified to serve alcohol, some require background checks for all volunteers, and others require proof of flame resistance for each canopy, even if they are all from the same manufacturer.  These are just a few examples, the list goes on.  Add to that the challenge of securing a suitable venue that can comfortably accommodate a festival and that allows alcohol and you’ll see there’s a lot more that goes into hosting a festival than most people realize.  Once all these conditions are met and the festival is a go the state is now scrutinizing each beer fest to make sure all these requirements are met.  Paperwork is gone over with a fine-tooth comb to make sure each and every beer has come into the festival per the regulations.

Such a sad day to hear two of Atlanta’s best beer fests are cancelled.  While other states are embracing the craft beer movement, Georgia seems to be working hard to curtail it.  Whether it’s stifling brewery growth with prohibition-era laws or making festival organizers jump through countless hoops to organize their events, our state seems determined to make things as hard as possible.

Fortunately we do still have some people that are masochistic enough to fight through all of this to bring us awesome beer festivals.  Here are a few coming up soon:

EDIT: Corrected a huge screw-up on my part, this does not affect the East Atlanta Beer Festival, that event is still very much a go.  I misunderstood Alan when we spoke.  Sorry about that.

https://beerguysradio.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/RIP-HOToberFest.jpghttps://beerguysradio.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/RIP-HOToberFest-150x150.jpgTim DennisBeer FestEventsLegislationNewsSB63cancelled,Classic City Brew Fest,dead,Depot Park Beer Fest,FU Johnny Law,HOToberFests,RIP,Roswell Beer FestHOToberFest Cancelled HOToberFest is no more.  Alan Raines, the organizer of the popular HOToberFest event, says the changing climate of craft beer and increasingly strict regulations have forced him to cancel any future plans for the festival. HOToberFest started in 2008 when there were very few beer festivals like it in Atlanta.  Raines says the...Cold beer, hot conversations, stupid jokes.