The International Beer Festival is coming to Perth on 10 & 11 January 2009 and will be located at Langley Park on the Swan River foreshore.
The festival will showcase local, national and international beers in a huge licensed area giving patrons a chance to sample a wide range of different beers. Drink tasting tickets start at $1. This is an ideal opportunity to try a selection of beers you may not have previously tasted.
There is entertainment for the whole family with carnival rides and side show alley, live music and DJ’s, fashion parades and displays. Activities include a rock climbing wall, sporting events and a free kids play area.
Food and non-alcoholic drinks are available.
Gates open at 3pm and close at 10pm.
Tickets are available at the gate:
$25 adult, $12 child over 12 years, $55 family
Or online at Ticketek:
$20 adult, $10 child over 12 years, $50 family (2 adults 2 child) plus transaction fees. Credit card fees apply
More info at the Perth Beer Fest website
Tags: australia, langley park, perth, wa
What a complete waste of time and money , $1 beer tickets was a blatant lie , more like $10 for a plastic cup worth , after 2 hours of being open there were more people leaving than arriving , the lucky shag pub on the foreshore was doing a roaring trade , iguess that says it all
DON’T GO , the drive through bottle shop was more exciting on the way home .
I agree with Darren,
Biggest joke of an event I’ve ever seen. Couldn’t expect more from a Perth run event though…
I agree with all of the above, waiting in line for over an hour for a beer then ending up paying $10 for a plastic cup. Perth needs to step up their game with entertainment and whoever organised the event obviously doesnt drink beer. We should have listened to the people coming out and sold our tickets and bought a carton, would have been cheaper and more value for money….
I went Saturday and this event was the biggest dud in the history of duds!
I arrived around 4:30, the first sign that things may not be so good is that many were allready leaving.
There were a few beer tents, all with massive lines. The longest was for the HB tent. It was about 100m long. My guestimate of wait for a beer would have been an hour plus. I waited in line for 15min, it hardly moved and I gave up.
Looked to be too many people, not enough bar staff and bar areas.
From what I could tell all the beers seemed to be ones you could get at a decent Perth pub anyhow.
So I walked out. A beer festival where you can’t get a beer. I asked for a pass out, so I could maybe see if it was a bit quieter later, but security said “no pass outs”
I spoke to many disgruntled people at Fineans.
Totally agree
Wait 35minutes to buy a ticket standing in the sun
Wait 30 minutes to get through the gate once you’ve got a ticket
Then find out that there are only 4 beer tents, one of which is selling Coopers pale ale and James boags.
Other three tents were Hofbrau, Weihenstephan, and Phoenix, now I have all of those beers in my fridge at home already.
There was NO tastings anywhere.
There were hundreds of LITTLE KIDS running around trying to trip over the people carrying 4 beers at a time cause it was the easiest way to get a drink.
If you waited in the nearest line there was a 50% chance when you got to the front of the que after 30minutes you were offered coopers instead of German, and then you had to go wait in another line for half an hour
It was just a TOTAL SCAM and the worst bit was arriving home in time for the 6pm news saying it was a raging success
absolute joke dont waste your money. I am writing a letter of complaint… any profit made here was a complete scam, and they should be made to donate the money to charity!
If you want to pay $25 to stand in the sun waiting in lines all day to pay $10 for a little plastic cup of beer that you could get from any decent bottle shop then this is the event for you.
For everyone else…. save your money.
WORST EVENT I HAVE EVER BEEN TO!!!
The Festival was a rip off..!
$25 to get in at gate (When it says 20 bucks on this site) and 10 bucks a pint!! What a joke, what did we pay 25
bucks for.. May as well go to the pub.. Which is what we did in the end. It cost us 25 dollars, but we managed to turn away about 40 ppl from paying..
Freo festival kicked its arse..
DO NOT GO EVER!!
I agree, we stayed for about 1 hour (which was how long it took us to get a beer!) Headed to Lucky Shag but was too packed, so bar hopped in Northbridge. Worst organised event I have ever had the misfortune to attend. Never again!!
Absolute ripoff… we got there at about 2:45pm and got in pretty quick… but the margaritta stand had only JUST turned on their slushy machines so I couldn’t get a drink for my missus… It took 10mins to walk around the grounds and see that there were no interesting beers and the only one NOT overpriced was phoenix (but at $7 a bottle… still a ripoff). We were among the first to leave and I gave the guys at the gate a tongue lashing. was dissapointed to see that nobody lining up listened to me as I shouted “save your money, go to a pub, there’s a wider selection of better priced beers and shorter queues”… I was even more appaled later that night to hear young kids on the train saying how great the event was… I guess people in perth don’t know what a beer festival is eh?
I completely agree with all the comments above and wish we had listened to the crowds heading away from the festival to not waste our time.
Last beer festival in freo was excellent with hundreds of different beers to taste.
This time no tastings at all.
I am embarressed I talked the event up to my friends only to disappoint them.
We pushed on to the Paddington Ale house who had a bigger selection of beers.
Best part of the event was no waiting times for the toilets… BECAUSE NO ONE COULD GET A DRINK!!
This article should be moved to the Worst of Perth web site.
The Perth International Beer Fest was not a beer festival – it was some company putting on beers you could buy in your local, serving them up to you warm and charging you $30 for the privilege (beer entry cost) on lining up for 45 minutes for each drink in 37C heat.
Beyond awful.
I wish I had a look at some of the comments people made before I went on Sunday. What a joke. My dead grandma can organise a better event than this one. Shame to the organisers. Where were the beers? I missed a whole lot of Belgium and German boutique beers. Thank god the lucky shag down the road was good fun (and normal prices!!!)
Totally agree with everything perviously mentioned.
It was an absolute debacle, one of the worst organised events I have ever been to.
As others have said this was not a beer festival, it was a make shift pub on a park selling overpriced beers in plastic cups with the privelidge of queuing for nearly an hour to get them, by about 5pm anything vaguelly interesting was sold out! Yes sold out at a Beer Festival that cost $25 to enter.
I have never heard so many disgruntled people in one place, I was actually quite worried that the place could turn into a big riot, there were some seriously angry people and I half expected big groups to form and storm the beer tents!
Someone needs to be accountable for this as it was a total rip off, ACOS Events who promoted this event should be ashamed, I will never attend anything they are involved with again.
I encourage everyone to log onto the http://www.beerfest.net.au website and go into the contact us section at the bottom and air your views as to how poor this event was.
Here is a copy of the letter I have emailed to the organisers this morning.
To Alek and Lisa,
I must start by saying that I went to the International Beer Festival on Saturday afternoon and was most disappointed with what I saw.
If the Belgian Beer Cafe, Bobby Dazzlers, the Lucky Shag and the Brass Monkey were all full by 6pm on a Saturday afternoon, full of people who had LEFT the festival, then this is a poor indication of the ability of the festival to operate. Even the Paddington Ale House had a larger Saturday night trade than usual, because people wanted to be able to drink a quality beer that they hadn’t tried before. I spoke to about 50 people after leaving the festival and I did not hear a single positive thing about it.
I’m going to raise a number of issues in this email, detailing what was wrong with the festival and how to improve it in the future.
1. The location – Langley Park was a bad spot to have the festival to start with. If you had held it in the Supreme Court Gardens or the Esplanade, it would have been much easier for people to get to AND it would not have been anywhere as easy to dissuade people from going on the walk back to the public transport.
2. The Lines to get in – If you are expecting thousands of people to turn up to a festival such as this, it would have been a lot easier for you to separate out the 6 entry points from the line to purchase your tickets. I waited in the line for 30 minutes just to get in the door
3. Range of beers – An International Beer Festival needs to feature beers from all over the world. Mauritius, Germany and the United Kingdom does not make an International Beer Festival, it makes an outdoor pub. Further to that, I did not see any Jarrah Jacks at any of the stalls on Saturday. Where were all the other Western Australian microbreweries? There was no Little Creatures, no Gage Roads, no Nail, no Matso’s, no Duckstein, no Elmars; the list goes on and on. It is clear that the Brewers Association was not brought into the loop until much too late and whatever deal that was offered to them by you was not good enough to get the breweries on board.
4. The amount of beer/supplies – There is absolutely no excuse for running out of beer at a beer festival. While this did not happen to me, I have friends of mine who I met later that evening who waited for a warm beer in a plastic cup topped up with ice. This is an absolute disgrace.
5. The Lines to get a drink – There was no way people should be waiting up to 90 minutes for a beer that they could get at the pub. For a beer festival to operate properly there should be enough tents or alcohol outlets to ensure that people can actually get a beer and walk away.
6. The tastings – What happened to the advertised “drink tasting tickets starting at $1� I certainly didn’t see any of these and no-one I spoke to found them either.
7. The rides – What was the purpose of having the rides there? I know this was supposed to be a family event, but for goodness sakes, it felt more like a school fete than a beer festival. When there are more stalls for generic fete-like products than beer stalls, then you can’t call it a beer festival.
8. The entertainment – This should have been a no-brainer. If you are going to put on girls in bikinis as part of a fashion show, you don’t put them on first, and you certainly don’t put 13 and 14 year old girls on stage at a beer festival. Why do you think all the men that flocked to the stage for the swimsuit section moved away as quickly as possible once the girls that opened the Christmas pageant got on stage? This was a very poor choice of entertainment. A number of modelling agencies and fashion outlets could have been called upon for this portion of the festival and would have provided much better entertainment.
9. The “family event†– I don’t care what you say, a beer festival is not for children. If you had not approached it as a family event and instead tried to pitch it in the same vein as a wine festival or Spring in the Valley, then you may have had more beer tents.
The lesson that you need to learn from this is that if you are going to run an international beer festival, you need to be consulting with the Brewers Association right from the beginning, rather than bringing them in after you have most things organised.
The Fremantle Beer Festival held in 2006 was an enormous success featuring a large number of breweries, a big range of beers, good quality bands and entertainment, places to sit, a good range of food. I have heard rumours of the return of the Fremantle Beer Festival and if that is the case, I sincerely hope that people’s experiences from the weekend do not detract from the possibility of an actually good beer festival in the future.
I have to agree that the event was badly organised and a disgrace for Perth.
Some friends and myself were one of the “smart” people who decided to listen to the people that were leaving and instead headed to the Grosvenor, who I must admit did an awesome job serving their patrons despite the sudden inflow of disgruntled BeerFest-goers.
I’ve been to some really good beer festivals in Tassie and the Gold Coast and I am disappointed that an event like this has been botched so severely in my home town.
* Outdoors in January – FAIL
* Overpriced entry – FAIL
* Overpriced warm beer – FAIL
* Small range of Beers – FAIL
* Long lines to everything – FAIL
* Trying to be family friendly yet still calling it Beerfest – FAIL
I hope the organisers are hanging their heads in shame.
(CRAP FEST)
For all of you that wish to wright to the event organisers directly and let them know just how bad of an event it realy was here are thier details.
Acos Event Management Pty Ltd
ABN 87124612586
Director – Aleksandar Ilic
alek@beerfest.net.au
61 415 455 707
Event Co-ordinator Lisa James
lisa@beerfest.net.au
61 438 533 137
Office Number:
61 8 9479 7537
Kim: “I hope the organisers are hanging their heads in shame.”
sadly the organisers will have pocketed a TON of cash from the event… I think it was all a scam and the people of Perth should start a class action lawsuit against the organisers and all people who paid for and kept their tickets deserve a full refund.
I agree with everything that was said. Perth & the rest of Australia seem to be behind in the entertainment events. Countries such as USA, UK & even NZ have more going for them.
WA will always be known as Wait Awhile!
The whole event was a complete was of time. All in all it was shit!!!
If this event wasn’t so crap i would have never had such an awesome time at the lucky shag.
EPIC FAIL
totally agree with everything said, i saved my sister the trip because i went on saturday and she had tickets for sunday,
I thought the festival was excellent. What is everyone complaining about ?
Well done event organizers, on a well thought out, and exceptionally well organised event.
Waste of time, I will never attend another beer festival in Perth again.
Jason – and how much are they paying you to say that?
or are you just completely retarded? because everyone who went that has ever been outside their front door before understood how bad it was
“Jason’s” Post is an almost word for word post that was made to The Perth Files, Stu’s Blog & The Worst Of Perth – it sounds like the organisers are trying their hardest to polishing their turd of an event.
BTW Simone, did you get the Perth City Council Minutes of the Proposal I found via Lazy aussie ?
Was the $1 tasting a lie or was there a limited numner. Did anyone actually get a $1 taste?
TheWorstOfPerth: I was one of the first in the gates and I did a quick lap around to check out what beers were there… nowhere did I find a $1 beer tasting. the cheapest I saw was $4 for a 200mL cup. This to me reaks of false advertising and the organisers should be pulled over hot coals for it. I was also one of the first back out the gates because after only 1 hour of being there the queues to get a beer were about 20 minutes long. I recomend everbody who is pissed off enough write a letter to the city of Perth and forward that letter on to DoCEP as well, don’t bother writing the organisers because they will ignore it.
I wrote a letter of complaint, following the guidelines on the ACCC website. They have an example letter there, and I definitely think following through with the ACCC is legitimate given that this event was misadvertised.
I received a reply today from lisa (details on a post above) offering a full refund into my account.
I think everyone should pursue this option, especially since this event was partially funded by the city of perth.
We could not believe how small it was considering the advertising. We struggled to find a reason why we paid $25 to get in, horrified at $10 a pint, and hugely dissapointed at blantantly being lied to regarding ‘tastings from $1′ which were non-existent.
Hardly ‘international’ when the main of the selection was australian and german.
HOPE THE ORGANIZERS TAKE NOTE OF CUSTOMERS/SUPPORTERS JUSTIFIED DISSAPOINTMENT!!