Brew at the Zoo, April 30

• We arrived around 7pm and found no lines. There was beer and decent grub in the VIP area for about the first hour sans lines. After that it was a free-for-all. There is something to be said about the early bird catching the worm...

• I had a great time! I will definitely go back again next year!

• No Doubt a Turd of an event. Poor in every ascpect.

• Could not have said it better. A friend of mine went last year and said it was awesome! After 45 minutes to turn in to Zoo another 45 in line to get in...they left. We stayed...and by 9:30...I saw a young crowd getting drunk and crazy. We left. We will NOT go back. Shame, I love the zoo and try to participate in anything they set up.

• The brunette Hoegaarden girl was a bitch ass hoe...

• This is not a beer geek event this is a drunk fest that I hope will not be around next year. As a craft beer fan we need to grow the craft beer world by attracting X amount of people...but we need to attract the right people not the fools just trying to get blasted. Next year check out Jupiter Beer Fest or next year's Brews N Bites. Cheers.

• Deer Beergee16 I could not have agreed with you more. I attended the 1st annual Metro Brew last year and it really felt like a wine tasting event. It was less crowded, it really felt from my point of view more organized. It gave us the opportunity to speak to vendors, purchase glass memorabilia and inquire about the history of the beer being tasted. We were really looking forward to this 2nd annual Metro Brew. It was nothing like the first, it fealt like a college party more than a Brew fest! No glass memorabilia was left, too many people! The booths were too close together, no food, I only saw 2 police officers, and my friend told me that for $70 dollars for the VIP section it was not worth the price. We were really disappointed with the event. It was more of "lets see if we can get to drink some beer", rather than "lets taste this brew and find out where it comes from and if they are selling it locally?". Boohoo for you New Times, also the entrance was a mess. We waited to get in a good 30 minutes, on the first event we just walked in through the gates, and also there was more police attendance in the entrance and within the premises.

• I went to the event, paid $60 for my partner and myself. I likely won't be back. --Signage was poor. People waited in the VIP line for half an hour before finding they were in the wrong place. --Tickets were checked twice, and general admission was allowed into an entry area. When the gates opened, there was a SINGLE GATE, allowing 2 people at once. The large number of people in the waiting area (who had already been ticket-checked) were funneled into this tiny space. Poorly done. --There was a map of the site, thanks. Unfortunately, it was not handed out at the funnel-gate. We found it at the New-Times booth, at the north end of the event, after we'd been there an hour. That made no sense whatsoever. --The individual booths were so close together, it was difficult to queue-up to sample the brews without creating a mess. --Individual vendors did a very uneven job showing what brews were being dispensed. --A number of bottled beers were poured at near-room temperature, or were opened early and had gone flat. --There were a number of vendors whose booths were empty. --Whenever you have beer, you need food. The selection was scant, at best. A hot dog vendor, someone selling "Tornados", and an arepa vendor. Really! Buffalo Hot Wings had a booth, but it was...empty. --There were nowhere near the more than 100 beers promised, especially if you yanked out mainstream beers like Yuengling and Polar which are simply not a craft beers. --When this was promoted as "Brew at the Zoo", I honestly thought this would be "in" the zoo. Instead, it was in a picnic area complete apart from the zoo. You could have held it in a Kendall parking lot for all the connection it had to the zoo. Very misleading. --The whole presentation was amatuerish and poorly laid out. There was no flow, and even with a map booths were hard to find. I tasted a lot of beer. I even liked some. It would have been great if someone had created a scorecard , organized by vendor, listing their beers. That way, people could have tracked what they liked and followed up. I bet your vendors would have appreciated that, because the people I saw were so plowed it's unlikely they remembered what they sampled. We tried to get info in advance from your website. 5 words: Go Back And Try Again. It was among the worst, especially for a media company that has a decent main site. I was dumbfounded. Final complaint: The Ads in the New Times continued to promote "VIP Tickets" up until the issue the week of the event. When we inquired, the rude customer service rep at the ticket company you used gave an audible sigh, and said, "Honey, those tickets fold out almost immediately," giving us the impression we were stupid for asking. Why continue to offer the tickets in ads unless you plan to sell them? I really looked forward to this. I don't club or go to bars, and as a beer geek, I looked forward to trying the unusual. I was saddened by the poor execution and selection, and astounded at how many people were lined up when we left about 10. At $30 per head, you likely took in well over $150 thousand, plus the money paid by vendors who actually showed up. The beer was free, a vendor promotional expense. With all of that money, it's amazing how much this looked like a high school carnival with suds. I hope the zoo at least got a nice chunk of change from this. I guess I'm getting old. After I left, I said to my partner that we'd have been better off if I'd taken the $60, gone to Stop and Shop, bought 40 bottles, and invited a few friends over to sample. More variety, more fun, and far less of the feeling that I had been brew-beaten by the New Times. Shame on you for not doing better. This could be so much more.

• Where r the rest of the pics! :-(

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