News & Features

The Michigan Brewers Guild recognizes and shares the frustration that some experienced when trying to purchase tickets for the Winter Beer Festival – which sold out in record time, again, this year. The ticket processing system tracked 18,000 unique users trying to purchase just over 6000 tickets which were all sold in less than 3 hours. This resulted in a large number of people not being able to purchase tickets. Similar to highly popular concerts, sporting activities and other craft beer events around the country, demand simply exceeded the availability of tickets. We certainly recognize that many people experienced frustrating technical issues on the ticketing site the day of the sale. Regardless of what precipitated these issues, It's clear to us that customer experience needs to be improved. Feedback from our attendees, supporters, and craft beer fans matters tremendously to us - please trust that we are working hard to make sure these technical problems don't happen again, and we will continue to do so right up until the next Winter Beer Festival. Core to the Guild’s mission, we continually strive to introduce more individuals to Michigan craft beer. However, we must limit the quantity of tickets available to any event to assure a safe, well-managed event. As with every Guild festival, we learn new things and continue to examine all elements of the events in an effort to improve them. Logistically the Winter Beer Festival presents its own set of challenges with regard to weather and overall execution. NOTE: With regard to tickets purchased from a third party individual - BUYER BEWARE! We will NOT guarantee the validity of tickets purchased from other online sources. Tickets determined to be "scalped" for more than face value will be voided. We appreciate your understanding and continued support of MiBeer. Cheers!