Before heading off to Florida for all that wedding fun, we squeezed in a bit of Baltimore fun. At what has become one of Baltimore’s fall traditions, Heavy Seas’ Pyrates, Pigs, and Pints event.
Long time readers may remember that we went to one of these events before, way back in 2009 when it was Clipper City’s Beer and Bacon festival. Wow that was a long time ago! Heavy Seas has enjoyed an explosion in popularity since then (while it seems I’ve just gotten older, and enjoyed a ridiculous amount of good beer since then) and they’ve expanded their beer line and now have their own restaurant, The Heavy Seas Ale House, in downtown Baltimore. They now do several of these types of events at the brewery a year. We hadn’t been since that first event years ago, but I had heard good things from people who had been to events since. So I was excited to go, dress like a pyrate, and enjoy a fun afternoon.
And generally, it was good. It was A LOT bigger, with a lot more beer and food, but it was also much more crowded. Overall, I thought the setup worked well–with most of the food setup in the warehouse space, the beer in the bottling area, and a nice outside patio. There were lots of different types of beer, including a ton of casks with different flavors to try.
And some of the food was REALLY good. Like that pulled pork taco in the picture above? AWESOME. But there was one little problem. There wasn’t nearly enough food. By 1.30, most of the popular food items were running out. By 2pm, most of the food stands were empty. And by 3, it was a food ghost town. The problem? The event went from 12-4. Yeah, in my book you shouldn’t run out of food half way through an event!!
So, would I go again? Maybe. The food running out so soon was a big deal for us, since we had been sampling slowly all afternoon. The unlimited tasting was nice, but we were really counting on being able to eat all afternoon. So if Heavy Seas worked on having enough food for the whole event, I think we would happily go again. But we would need to think about it at the price point without more food.
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To be fair, this was mostly a problem with the vendors. There was PLENTY of beer available, and the Ale House (not really associated, but kinda sorta) had food throughout the event. So, one of two things happened here: 1) Heavy Seas didn’t inform the vendors how many people were going to be there (and yet their associated restaurant had it pegged); 2) the vendors ALL badly missed with the food; 2a) the vendors all badly missed on the food intentionally because they weren’t getting enough of the gate to make them interested in anything more than bringing enough food to last for two hours.
Also galling was – initially at least – the guests formed a long buffet line that snaked around food area, going from station to station, rather than little lines at each of the stations. That may have been a space issue, as the warehouse didn’t have quite the room to have lines fanning out into the center, where they had placed several tables.
It was a fun event, and the beer was good, and most of the food – what you could get of it – was pretty good, too.