This past weekend was All Pints North, an annual beer festival organized by the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild in Duluth. I recently saw another writer refer to it as “Brewers’ Summer Camp” and it is. Minnesota currently has approximately 170 operating breweries and brewpubs, in a given year two thirds to three quarters of them will show up and pour beer. One of the reasons for that big turnout is that the day before All Pints North, the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild partners with District St. Paul-Minneapolis of the Master Brewers Association of the Americas in organizing a Business and Technical Conference for the members of both organizations. It is a very good conference that takes a deep dive into several aspects of operating a brewery or brewpub each year. I attended the conference a few times while I was doing some brewery consulting work and each year it seems to draw a “rock star” or two of the beer world.
All Pints North itself is held at Bayfront Park with a lovely view of the Duluth-Superior harbor and lift bridge and is a “rain or shine” event. This year the temperature was in the mid-80s with a slight breeze so it wasn’t bad at all. I missed this event last year due to a wedding so I noticed some changes such as layout of where brewers were set up, but it continues to be a really fun event with plenty of beer, fun games and activities, as well as music from Viva Knievel, a cover band comprised mostly of staff from Bauhaus Brew Labs.
There was one thing the Guild could do to improve the festival, however. The check-in process was very slow and the line to enter stretched from Bayfront Park, past the Great Lakes Aquarium, and behind the Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center. We were about halfway back in that line and didn’t get into the festival grounds until 25 minutes after the start. To compensate, organizers extended the festival by 30 minutes, but there has to be a better way to get 4500 people into a park. Multiple points of entry is the first thing that comes to mind.
If thinking of attending All Pints North next year, keep a few things in mind. The event has sold out for the last several years so get your tickets early. Tickets sales begin about three months prior to the event, but the date is announced much earlier. Once you know the date and have decided to attend, book a room. It’s Duluth in the summertime, hotels will be expensive and they will sell out. Our preference is to book something in Canal Park or downtown and to walk, use the hotel shuttle, or a ride service everywhere. This year we parked the car on Thursday and didn’t move it until checking out of the hotel on Sunday. There are a lot of ancillary beer events around town in the days leading up to All Pints North. They can be a lot of fun and often feature some hard-to-find or special one-off beers so they are worth checking out. Finally, remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint…
All Pints North itself is held at Bayfront Park with a lovely view of the Duluth-Superior harbor and lift bridge and is a “rain or shine” event. This year the temperature was in the mid-80s with a slight breeze so it wasn’t bad at all. I missed this event last year due to a wedding so I noticed some changes such as layout of where brewers were set up, but it continues to be a really fun event with plenty of beer, fun games and activities, as well as music from Viva Knievel, a cover band comprised mostly of staff from Bauhaus Brew Labs.
There was one thing the Guild could do to improve the festival, however. The check-in process was very slow and the line to enter stretched from Bayfront Park, past the Great Lakes Aquarium, and behind the Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center. We were about halfway back in that line and didn’t get into the festival grounds until 25 minutes after the start. To compensate, organizers extended the festival by 30 minutes, but there has to be a better way to get 4500 people into a park. Multiple points of entry is the first thing that comes to mind.
If thinking of attending All Pints North next year, keep a few things in mind. The event has sold out for the last several years so get your tickets early. Tickets sales begin about three months prior to the event, but the date is announced much earlier. Once you know the date and have decided to attend, book a room. It’s Duluth in the summertime, hotels will be expensive and they will sell out. Our preference is to book something in Canal Park or downtown and to walk, use the hotel shuttle, or a ride service everywhere. This year we parked the car on Thursday and didn’t move it until checking out of the hotel on Sunday. There are a lot of ancillary beer events around town in the days leading up to All Pints North. They can be a lot of fun and often feature some hard-to-find or special one-off beers so they are worth checking out. Finally, remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint…
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