It’s really not much of a story, but after several weeks of effort and constantly hitting F5 to refresh my web browser I was able to sign up for a Surly Brewery Tour. They offer a 2 hour long tour on most Fridays and Saturdays and they fill up very quickly with only being able to register online. If you too want to sign up you need to be online usually from 8am – 10am (whenever registration opens) on a Friday morning 3 weeks before you would like to go to said brewery tour.

The downside of most of the smaller local breweries having signups is that it takes a lot of the fun of just going on an afternoon brewery tour with who you are with at the time. I actually had to turn some guests away for my previous brewery tour because I had just registered for 2 people for the local beer adventure. Another issue I have with signing up online is how it really benefits people that surf the web all day or work on computers (see hipster) and hurts the chances of people that work in the service industry.

When I lived in Milwaukee, The Wife and I were able to walk to The Lake Front Brewery tour which didn’t require any signups and they ran several tours (5 or 6?) on Saturdays. Initially, there weren’t lines and the tour was very easy to go on, but as popularity grew there were huge lines that required planning to avoid a 2 hour wait.

Which system do you like the best either having sign ups that aren’t necessarily fair to everyone due to having weird sign up times and having to giving weeks of notice or having to wait in long lines only to find out you just missed the last tour? This doesn’t even need to coordinate to brewery tours because many venues offer free tickets vs buying them at the door. I’d like to hear your thoughts on this……..