Brewski again brings thousands to town
BrewSki 2026 was as good or better as any in the past 11 years since it was born by the local chamber of commerce- and there have been some dandies since then.
This year the last day in February was a stellar one for the big winter social event here. There was sunshine all day, with the mercury touching 40 degrees F. at mid-afternoon. If there was one complaint about that Saturday’s weather were the strong winds throughout the afternoon, which had a tendency to chill the long line of BrewSki-goers waiting to sign in.
In the morning the golf course parking lot was almost glare ice, but the town highway department had made each much safer for walkers with an ample coating of sand by the event’s noon start.
When Town Recreation Director Laura LaBarge arrived on the scene with all the event supplies shortly after 9a.m., there were already people in the parking lot, sort of tail-gating.
By noon however the admissions line stretched from the tented registration office in front of the pro shop, across the parking lot and down country club road to Route 30.
As always cars were parked down to the intersection, but this year because of a new shuttle arrangement with the school district, vehicles weren’t parked up past the golf course to nearly the entrance of the former Big Tupper, like they were in recent years.
Mrs. LaBarge and school district officials worked out a two-bus shuttle system this year which was an incredible improvement to traffic flow and dramatically reduced chances for an inebriated driver headed home after the event.
Kudos to the local board of education and Superintendent Jaycee Welsh for making that happen. Hopefully it becomes tradition!
The town contracted with the school district for its bare-bones bus rental rate and the salary of the two drivers that day.
Mac’s Safe Ride II was another big piece of the improved transportation system this year. A town donation to the very deserving safe ride agency followed.
For the new shuttle program Mrs. LaBarge arranged pick-up and drop-off locations based on the information she received from people when they registered in recent months. From that information the school’s transportation director Alyssa Hopkins worked out the best and quickest bus routes to shuttle visitors to and from the site.
Local pick-up spots included motels, airbnbs, gas stations, etc.
Mrs. LaBarge said the new shuttle system went well, but she may change it a bit next year where there will be less door to door pick-ups and more visits to parking areas around town. Those plans are still tentative, however.
There were guides on each of the two school buses. One was Bob Fletcher, who narrated the trip with tales of Tupper Lake and some of the buildings they were passing. Many of the riders found Bob’s narrative very funny and very interesting, according to Mrs. LaBarge. The recreation department’s Bill Cote recruited a couple of his motorcycle club members from the Gunfighters MC- John Tibbets and Tim Snickles to accompany the second bus.
The BrewSki is growing significantly in popularity with each passing year. Evidence of that is how quickly this year’s admission tickets sold out.
All 1,350 admission tickets ($40 each) sold out two weeks earlier than ever before. Mrs. LaBarge called that “incredible.”
The only free tickets- a dozen or so- were available on the day of the event at admission time, when the town event organizers were notified by attendees that they had extra tickets, because some members of their party had to cancel at the last minute. In the end the ticket count, with the re-sales, was about 1,368.
The recreation director estimated that in addition to the ticket-buyers, there were likely about 400 to 500 people who don’t drink beer, and families and friends of the brewers who come to help them, plus children accompanying their parents.
The recreation department also has a policy to provide free tickets to group members who agree to be designated drivers before the event- another safe-driving measure the town put in place. “We really push the parties who are signing up to have designated drivers if they are driving their own vehicles up to the golf course site of the BrewSki.
This year the costumed participants were the best yet, most figure. The group class first prize went to the Traffic Safety folks, in their cone costumes. Last year this group came as “The Dudes.”
Best individual costume prize went to Mindy Finnegan of Oswego, the beer pong lady.
Of the overall mood at the event that Saturday Mrs. LaBarge said there were folks who came to the BrewSki happier this year than some in the past- and she credited that with the new shuttle service.
If there was one complaint it was the length of the line of BrewSki-goers waiting to be admitted. Unfortunately some people stood in line for 45 minutes.
The town’s BrewSki web site was hacked this year by some Facebook group, so it was necessary for the recreation department’s three admission people (Mrs. LaBarge and Volunteers Melissa Divirgeles and Katie Drasye) to validate every ticket, to make sure it was genuine and not fake. About a half dozen fake tickets were found, so those people had to buy a replacement ticket at full cost. Mrs. LaBarge said all of them realized they had been scammed by the fake Facebook site, when their tickets were compared with the town’s.
“A couple were discouraged, but they weren’t angry at us!” the recreation director noted. She figures Bots were used to commit the crime.
The Facebook group apparently stole images off the town’s site to create its own fake one, after the recreation department posted on its site that all the tickets were gone. “They stole our intellectual property and money from those six people!”
She said that next year the town’s admission tickets will come with either a QR code or a bar code which can be scanned by the admission workers very fast. That should speed up the admission process and curb the length of the line for people waiting to get in.
This year’s BrewSki had contracted with 19 breweries, but two backed out the day of the event because of family and business problems.
One of the brewers who came had a major family problem while he was on site and had to leave suddenly. “The grooming team quickly jumped in to help him, grabbed his equipment and products and got him on his way.”
Helping out the recreation department too this year was Allie Wormuth, selling merchandise and answering guest questions from inside the pro shop.
Everybody was able to get up there safely, just maybe a little bit later than they wanted.
A number of nearby communities like Newcomb and Long Lake shuttled residents there to the BrewSki and the Franklin County Transportation program transported BrewSki-ites from the Lake Placid and Saranac Lake villages.
A staffer from SLIC Network of Nicholville was again there to promote its growing network.
Helping out again this year were four members of the Wild Center’s Americorp young adults. Two poured the Wild Center’s Wild Lights lager that is produced at the museum in collaboration with Raquette River Brewing. The other two Americorp volunteers worked in the pro shop and in the admissions tent.
This year the Tupper Lake Lions Club moved its 50/50 sales venue outdoors from the pro shop to the admission line for direct contact with the visitors. Staffing it were Lions Neil and Linda Pickering and Annie Eldred. The relocation may have been one of the reasons for the club’s very robust ticket sales this year, creating the largest Fire and Ice Golf Tournament prize of $2,750. It was a good year for lucky Carlos Gonzalez to buy his ticket.
It was a banner day for the Lions too. The Fire and Ice event attracted not only more than several dozen snow golfers, but 30 local sponsors, six more than last year, and very brisk cook shack sales. They were so brisk, in fact, all products were sold out before the end. That marks the second year in a row the club sold out early. It must have been those Lions onions which routinely smother those grill goodies?
The Lions Fire and Ice snow golf is one of the club’s best fundraisers of the year and the profits there go a long ways to underwriting the thousands of dollars the club shares with many local organizations and community projects each year.
Incidentally the perennial champs- Lions Scott and Pam Edwards- re-recruited their longstanding teammate, Spencer Lanthier out of retirement to produce another first place win. We think they practice in their backyards.
Each year the town highway department generously provides the wood for the Lions Club bonfire, but because the town was a little light on firewood this year, Scott and Amanda Lizotte of Lizotte Logging stepped in and furnished it to keep the BrewSki-ites toasty throughout the day.
The recreation director had many good things to say about John Gillis and his trail maintenance crew, which produced superb and well packed trails from the abundant snow cover- great for both skiing and walking. Each year too the trail men shuttle the brew station supplies up onto the trail and to the brewers’ sites along it.
Unlike the first few BrewSkis, the brewers are now paid $550 each in order to make sure they bring enough suds to satisfy all pallets. They are now required to bring at least seven sixtels of their best brews.
Recreation Department staffer Bill Cote again did a good job recruiting brewers from all over the state, including many from across central New York. They included breweries from Whitehall, Schenectady, Geneva, Hamilton, Cazenovia, Utica, Saratoga as well as closer to home at Akwesasne and our hometown favorite, Raquette River Brewing. Another popular one, Valcour Brewing, had to cancel at the last minute this year.
The tens of thousands in revenues that the event makes each year goes a long ways to helping to underwrite many of the town events that aren’t as profitable or perhaps not profitable at all.
There was a commonality at this year’s event that was pervasive. -And it was happiness all around!
Kudos to all who helped the town’s recreation department staffers produce another great BrewSki, a winter event like the Northern Challenge that is helping to put Tupper Lake on the map at a time of year when few visitors would otherwise be in town!
-Dan McClelland