Dress down. Way down.
Unless you plan to hang out in the Whisky & Wine Lounge the whole time, do not under any circumstances wear anything with a collar or made of leather because you’ll want to rip everything off. So ditch the dapper gear; no one cares. Audi Fashion Festival it is not.
Line your stomach beforehand.
We’re sure the on-site food options were decent, but somehow we kept getting enticed by more and more booze, so we never made it to the kebab(?) stall. Beer may be pretty filling but don’t imagine for a second that you can hoodwink your body into believing you’ve had a complete meal—it’ll just wake you up at 3am with a headache and a desperate ache for deep-fried goods.
That old chestnut about the early bird.
We’re not really fans of mingling with sweaty bodies as the crowd clamors for booze. You might feel the same. If you do, brave the afternoon heat, come early, and be rewarded with minimal body contact and beers that haven’t turned into something resembling warm pee.
Try everything once.
We stuck to the IPAs and porters because we’re boring creatures of habit and “oh, that’s my favorite!!!!” But if you can, go out of your way to pick up drinks you don’t normally like. While regular cider leaves us cold and rots our teeth, we’re still kicking ourselves for not looking hard enough for those fancy French Dupont ciders that we heard were much more grown-up and complex than the usual stuff.
If you can’t try everything once, support the independent distributors.
Based on our highly unscientific studies, small-time booth operators tended to be more friendly, happy to geek out with us, and willing to inundate patrons with their wacky brews, while big-name giants needed to see our money before they parted with their snack-size portions of watery lager. Since many of the indie beer lovers put in a lot of hard work running the booths and making sure everyone gets their fill of hoppy ambrosia, we humbly suggest showing them a little more love.
