The most found beer for the 2008 Bitter and Twisted festival. The beer we sent to most people to taste is: Snowy Mountains Razorback Red Ale

If you are reading this, and you saw us at the festival, then you shall notice it looks a little different. We spent the whole time leading up to the beer festival preparing for it, and so the new design hasn’t made it online yet. Don’t worry, a few exams and we’ll have a huge amount of time up our sleeves to get everything online - for now apologies.

So we’re back. Tired from the long drive, but happy to be back with our families. It was a good swap, going from standing up for two days, to sitting down for a thirteen hour drive - but the weekend was a fantastic experience for us, and also for our website.

So, I think the shortest review is we had a ball. Two days, lots of beer to test, time to hang out with some awesome people, and nice weather.

For us the festival was about connecting with brewers, beer fans and getting the idea of what we do out there. Yes, it was the very first festival that MyPerfect has been at, and judging by how it went, I think it won’t be the last.

We spent most of Saturday morning fixing up the website. Yes, we left home like cowboys with a broken computer that needed a format - the RAID controller had died. We downloaded the data we needed while making our way through the Sydney traffic (Thanks to AB). It shows that we are truly bootstrapping just making sure we can get through what we can, with what we have - if you came and saw us on Saturday, sorry but we had it working a treat on Sunday.

The weather got better. Our computers didn’t misbehave. We showed people beer they would enjoy. Sunday was brilliant, it was as if the gremilins were taken out of the system and everything was proper. Plenty of people stopped by, played the game and went to try beer - many of those came back to let us know that it was something they enjoyed, most loved it.

For me, the stand out things were that our site worked. For sure, we have known while we’re making the site it was a great idea, but the interaction with people has been watching google stats. To actually see it work in the real world, point people to their perfect beer, and see them respond was something rated ’super cool’.

Another thing I’ll always remember was the crew we took up. Nathan (the people person) was a great dude to have on board (except the strawberry donuts) he chatted to the brewers while they were busy and got the message out there. And Roger, the powerhouse - rebuild a computer, debug a web application, change queries, enter beer data all in a single bound.

It was a great experience and a great way for us to connect with people who love beer. As I told a few people, we are just geeks who would like to learn to love beer, and the only way to do that is hang out with guys like we met on the weekend. So thanks for sharing your knowledge, your passion and time with us. We really appreciate it.

Shout outs to Dean from Pukara Estate. The guys from Snowy Mountains for the Pilsner. The guys from Beer Masons for being inspiring - Chris you make beer interesting.