(Balboa Park, San Diego)

On Easter Sunday, 2018, a massive craft beer hunt, which substituted rare bottles of craft beer for the normal candy or egg options led to street violence and possible injury in San Diego’s most famous urban park.

It was a huge black eye for San Diego, a craft beer mecca, that like it or not, clearly qualifies as another “Great Moment in Brewing.”

Word of a flash mob beer hunt to be held in Balboa Park had been whispered about for weeks via social media and on sketchy craft beer news and lifestyle platforms…

But most industry watchers dismissed the rumored beer hunt as an internet hoax until a bottle of Firestone Walker’s über- limited Coconut Rye Parabola was found under a bush by a dog walker taking a dawn stroll in the on April 1^st.

Word of the  beer’s discovery (a week ahead of its scheduled release!), spread like wildfire in the early morning hours and by 5am there were reports of huge mobs scouring San Diego’s legendary 1,200 acre park for more hidden craft beers.

(Numerous injuries were reported)

Police where quickly called in to try to quell the crowd as beer skirmishes broke out in the Marston Hills natural region of the park as well near the Alcazar Garden.

But the increased police presence and San Diego Mayor Kevin Falconer’s impassioned pleas to citizens to avoid the area did little to stop the craft beer-crazed mobs now roaming the expansive park in search of the latest West Coast IPAs or other hard to get beer rarities.

CNN News crews caught one individual with a newly found bottle of 2014 Proprietor’s Bourbon County Stout, desperately fighting his way out of the park….

Bottles of Omnipollo rarities and Modern Times Beer favorites were shattered as police helicopters swarmed the city’s most celebrated park in hopes of dispersing the enormous crowds of craft beer fanatics.

For more on the legendary mayhem in Balboa Park check out the retrospect of this unfortunate moment from San Diego’s 10News.

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