Choosing
Whether a professional brewer, beer aficionado, marketeer, or beer neophyte you must decide which of the plethora of beer howdowns you deem worthy of attending. Rule #1 - bigger is not always better. Some of the best beer events are the small ones that are well done with lots of great hard to find beers. The smaller festivals afford you a chance to taste beers in a leisured environment and more easily have a free exchange of ideas with others. These events are often put on by people who truly love beer (not just the possibility of making money by cashing in on the "Microbrew" craze). A perfect example of this type of beer event is the Toronado's Belgian beer festival. An annual, month long, event that features more than sixteen hard to find Belgian beers on draft, not to mention the regularly large line up of bottled Belgian ales that the Toronado has. This event pairs the beers with food and is really all about the enjoyment of the beverage's flavors. I would like to give you a few other examples of smaller events like this one, but I am not going to, because if I did that, then you would all flock there and they would no longer be all that small. The people that put these events on would become overly excited by the enormous piles of green backs that they were raking in. They would then, of course, become obsessed with prospect of making ever lager sums of cash. The Greed factor would kick in and soon swirl wildly out of control. This in turn would make them neglect their friends and families as they discovered the thrills of the fast life; cocaine, crack, meth, and other recreational drugs would abound. And eventually, when the bottom falls out of this whole "Microbrew" thing (which it will any day now), their whole life would go crashing straight into a beef & bean burrito cart on the corner of 6th and Fulton. Hey man, I couldn't deal with that on my conscious. Rule #2 - Big can be fun too. Although the really big beer festivals are not the best places to discriminatingly taste the nuances of beer flavors, they too can be an interesting experience. They often offer to you an abundant selection of beers that are not readily available in your area. There are often brewery representatives in attendance that can semi-intelligently answer beer and brewing questions (if your into that sort of thing). The shmoosing is better at larger events, and the people watching is vastly superior. There is, in addition, that heighten feeling of giddy conviviality that only comes with being a member of a large group that is relaxing and loosing some of it's inhibitions. For the true behemoths of beer insanity I recommend (in ascending order of largness) the Oregon Brewer's Festival (OBF), the Great American Beer Festival (GABF), The Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) or the Oktoberfest (the big mack daddy of all beer events). It must be noted that the GBBF is the exception to the big rule. While it is quite large in size it remains extremely civilized and still manages to keep the focus on tasting the beers.

Preparation
As any boy scout will tell you preparation is everything. In this mean season there is no way to adequately prepare for all eventualities, but, there are a few things that you can do to ward off the bad juju which may be the cause of a failed beer marathon. We all know that higher levels of alcohol consumption can deplete vitamins from your body. So ...... pack lots of vitamins, especially the B-complex (brewer's yeast supplement is a good source of B-complex). Always have comfortable shoes and lots of clean socks. You are constantly on your feet at these events; talking, drinking, shmoosing, wandering about aimlessly. At the end of the day your dogs are gonna be hurting unless you have some damn comfortable shoes. In addition, there can be no overestimating the importance of clean socks. You may be hot, sweaty and spattered with vileness, but slip your feet into a clean pair of socks and your whole world changes; your total outlook on life is dramatically enhanced. No doubt about it - clean socks can make your day. I also recommend a large supply aspirin; they will make an excellent accompaniment for these types of adventures.

Getting there
The three rules of air travel are - medicate, medicate and medicate. This will greatly reduce the intense fear of death related to the knowledge that the giant metal object in which you are sitting (that weighs as much as a large house and science has somehow made lighter than air) could go plummeting into terra (extremely) firma at any second. It also has the added bonus of making it easier to sleep during the flight, thus you arrive rested and refreshed. This also works well for train travel. Don't forget that the train trip (no pun intended) takes longer and remember to factor this in. And as always; bring enough to share with your friends. It is important to remember not to over do it, the object here is to arrive fresh and ready to rock, not semi conscious and about to be rolled. When operating a motor vehicle the important thing to remember is only mild amphetamines (multiple cups of coffee, no-doze tablets, and the ever exciting Mahuang-Ginsing-Yohimbe mix). No matter how you go it is also a good idea to drink lots of water because traveling can quickly dehydrate you.

Arrival
The first and foremost thing to do upon rolling into town is procure a safe and secure place of lodging. I'm not talking about that hedge you found in a local park like when you were 19, but a hotel, gasthaus, or bed and breakfast. A place where you can safely store your stuff, meet comrades and return to at the end of a good night of debauchery. It will be a home base for you, a temporary sanctuary. Every operative must have a safe house.

Getting in
This is the time when, if you are not directly connected to a brewery or ancillary profession, your gonna have to call in the favors of any friends that are. Those guys always have extra tickets ..... and don't let them try and tell you otherwise. Of course if you don't know anyone with an extra freebie then you will just have to cough up the dough and pay to get in. But all is not lost, once you are inside then is the time to start planning for the next event. There are, in attendance, dozen (nay hundreds) of under paid brewery employee. Bribes and sexual favor have worked well for years on senators & congress persons..... surely they will work on these folks.

Etiquette
Right off the bat we need to get one thing straight. No howling - If you insist on participating in all that whooping & screaming you will instantly be branded as a rank amateur. You never see any of the really big, hard core, fest goers doing this howling foolishness. Examples: Michael Jackson - never ! Bill Owens - never ! Charlie Papazian - never ! Why do you think president Reagan raise the drinking age to 21 anyway, it was because all the damn 19 year olds that came to his white house keggers were always howling & screaming ! So cut the howling crap out or some future president may be forced to raise the drinking age to 27. There are a few other Emily Post considerations. Coaster throwing is another form of unacceptable behavior ...... unless your aim is better than mine. No stealing of brewery equipment and signage (yah, you know who you are). And should you run into a beer writer the proper thing to do is buy them several beers and if at all possible take them out to dinner or treat them to a session at the local spa.

Free Stuff
I am convinced that if you worked the beer festival circuit hard enough you could actually make a living selling all the free stuff that you collected from brewery and equipment suppliers. These guys are always giving stuff away: free coasters, pins, pens, bottle openers, sticker, caps, t-shirts, glasses, coffee mugs, pamphlets, magazines, books, bags, temporary tattoos, posters. The list is endless. I have this friend, who will remain nameless (his initials are D.C.), who foolishly believes that he gets better free stuff than I do. But he's WRONG! Does he have a Siebel Institute pen ? (no !) Did Weyerman Malting give him a free copy of "Die Letzten 100 Brauereien in Bamberg und Seinem Landkreis"- hard cover edition ? (I think not) O.K. so he did get that really cool beer stein from Rastal - but that not the point. The point is there is a lot of free stuff to be had at these things so you better keep an eye out for it.

The Second Day
Remember to pace your self - this is a distance event The best thing to do is to ingest your vitamin B-complex before you launch into your mission of inebriation or at least before you go to bed. Drink lots of water through out the day; at the festivities, at the end of the evening and upon waking. Eat food, not only during the celebration process but in the morning as well. For breakfast on the second day I highly recommend a massive 4 egg scramble with salsa and black beans, hash browns, toast, large O.J., an inordinately large chocolate milk shake, half a grapefruit and several cups of coffee. One must keep up their strength. Showering is not only polite to others, but it has real benefits to the beer festival attendee. Taking a nice long hot shower will not only relax and help re-hydrate you, it will also open the pores and expedite the toxins departure from your body. When all else fails there's always aspirin and those mild amphetamines that we discussed earlier.