{"id":12921,"date":"2008-09-06T11:15:07","date_gmt":"2008-09-06T18:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2008\/09\/06\/brew-at-the-zoo.html"},"modified":"2008-09-06T11:15:07","modified_gmt":"2008-09-06T18:15:07","slug":"brew_at_the_zoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/06\/brew_at_the_zoo.html","title":{"rendered":"Brew at the Zoo!"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Went to the big annual shindig at the Denver Zoo last night — our biggest crew yet (and to a sell-out crowd). Margie and I, Stan, Doyce & Kate, and Jackie. Lots of good beer, lots of good food, lots of good company — and enjoyed Angie Stevens<\/a> live on stage, too. The weather was cool, but the rain I’d worried about earlier in the day never showed up, huzzah.<\/p>\n

The event was bigger than in past years, too, and it had the feel of being run by someone different. Some comments, good and bad.<\/p>\n

Good<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. They were spread out over a greater space. Like Do at the Zoo, it wasn’t all focused on the party shelters, but spread from the shelters down to the carousel\/train area. That avoided the hellish crunch for the breweries beneath the shelter from past years, and made for a bit more wandering fun.<\/li>\n
  2. More food places. There were a number of familiar faces from Do at the Zoo. The food, as always, was very tasty, and I took note of a few places I hadn’t thought of for a while.<\/li>\n
  3. There were some hard liquor stations at the main shelter — mostly advertising vodka, but with rum and gin and other items. That made for a nice (though not critical) change of pace, esp. later in the evening.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Not-So-Good<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. No shirts or logo swag. Not a huge loss, since the logo itself this year wasn’t all that spiffy, but in the past it’s been kind of a nice feature.<\/li>\n
    2. Extra pay-for-food stations. They didn’t seem to be getting a lot of traffic, since the rest of the food was free — albeit behind ginormous lines. I honestly felt it was taking up space that could have been better used.<\/li>\n
    3. Ginormous lines for some of the food (albeit worth it, such as for the Golden Toad<\/a> booth). And not always very well defined lines. Doing a bit more to (a) break up the food places (esp. the popular ones) and (b) define some clearer queues would help, and be quite doable.<\/li>\n
    4. Though spread out more, some of the food stations were in some known choke points, which led to still worse choking (line-wise, not food-wise). I hope someone was taking notes. (One idea would, rather than a booth of four or eight being just food, or just beer, mixing it up a bit.)<\/li>\n
    5. No desserts! Past shindigs have had some handy free dessert stations to fill the stomach later in the evening when you didn’t feel like another slider or something-on-a-stick. That was missing now, in favor of the liquor stations. Net-net, I’d rather have had some lemon squares.<\/li>\n
    6. Brewery tastes change. This year, everyone had an IPA, and most had a red. Very few places had a Wheat or Hef. That made it a less ecstatically enjoyable beerwise for me … but it didn’t cut down my imbibery that <\/em>much.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Still, those are mostly refinements. Overall, it was a fine time, glad we went … look forward to going next year …<\/p>\n

      (And many thanks to Jackie for being the Designated Driver. You rock, Jacks!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Went to the big annual shindig at the Denver Zoo last night — our biggest crew yet (and to a sell-out crowd). Margie and I, Stan, Doyce & Kate, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-drink"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12223,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/20\/do_at_the_zoo.html","url_meta":{"origin":12921,"position":0},"title":"Do at the Zoo","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 20-Jun-08 4:45pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So last night we went to the Do at the Zoo. 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