OnTap Magazine

Drinking separately together via Zoom - Image by Richard Wooding It’s a devastating time to be an event organiser. And indeed, to be a beer-loving extrovert. As festival after conference after party got cancelled, brewers were feeling bleak about their rapidly diminishing sales and drinkers were feeling bleak about their favourite events all disappearing. I was feeling particularly sad about missing Fools & Fans, as well as the Craft Brewers Powwow – two of my favourite weekends of the year – so to cheer myself (and others) up a little, I came up with the idea of Backyard Beerfest. I had no idea how popular it would be. e concept was simple: host a beer festival in your own backyard, inviting only the people that live on your property. Do whatever you normally do at festivals – sing out of tune, bombard brewers with endless questions, taste beers from as many di erent breweries as possible and ll your face with festival food. The way South Africans embraced the idea was really quite remarkable. ere were people who set up full-on beer stands in their gardens, people who created professional posters advertising their event to themselves. Some created promo videos showing o their beer line-up, others posted hilarious videos of their journey to the fest (backing the car out of the garage a few inches, then pulling back in). People built kids’ areas and stages, they posted band line-ups, made wristbands and many complimented the cleanliness of the ablutions at their fest. Social media was alive with #backyardbeerfest posts – people sharing what they were drinking, people chatting to brewers, people posting pics of the typical festival queue for the loo, and others printing off life-sized photos of their friends’ heads so they could hang out with their buddies while respecting the laws of lockdown. ank you all for your amazing ingenuity when it came to staging a fest at home – the deep love for beer and beer festivals was felt all around the country (and indeed in the half-dozen other nations that joined in with Backyard Beerfest). It brought big smiles to many faces at the start of what turned out to be a lengthy period of isolation. My only regret about the day is that it was so early in the lockdown period, although the fear was that with prohibition raging, people would run out of beer if the event was held too far into our quarantine. But keep an eye out for the #BackyardBeerfest on social media – it might be making its way into your back garden again soon… BACKYARD BEERFEST LUCY CORNE EVENT RECAP 6 | Winter 2020 | ontapmag.co.za