ABQ Blues & Brews Fest @ Isleta Amphitheater

Overall a decent event and I enjoyed myself.
We paid the extra dough to get in an hour early and I’m glad we did, because the crowd’s thinner during that first hour, plus even with the extra time we were still unable to visit all the booths.
As far as beer selection, there weren’t a whole lot of new names, so this is part of why I can’t give more stars. Aside from a few Colorado breweries, who in fact don’t even sell beer in New Mexico, the options were essentially what you’d find in any liquor store. The one exception to this were the several local breweries that don’t bottle their stuff quite yet. Of these, it was nice to see Sandia Chile Grill, Cazuela’s, New Mexico Brewing Co. (out of Las Vegas, apparently), and Bosque Brewing present.
It was also nice to be outdoors for this event and the weather couldn’t have been better, so lets hope we see more outdoor drinking opportunities.
Other things worth mentioning are that when we first got in at one, a number of booths didn’t have bottle openers to serve beer and one server wasn’t sure if she was supposed to serve until two. I helped out as I could by offering my bottle opener, plus assured the one server that we’d paid to get in early and try beers and damn sure weren’t going to wait an hour to try from her booth.
The music was good but mostly was just a backdrop to all the drinking going on. Because of the way the booths had been set up, the poor musicians had to essentially play to an empty stadium. That must’ve been a bit of a bummer.
Finally, I was a bit peeved that at 5 PM ON THE DOT, the servers just stopped serving beer. This despite having plenty more to serve. Did they really prefer taking the stuff home? That was annoying, but oh well, I was three sheets to the wind anyways at that point.
All in all, I had a good time and enjoyed myself, but without some new breweries in the future, it’ll be hard for me to justify going to future beer festivals.